vine is literally within us. The stimulating agents in the blood are tiny bodies called "hormones." These give the spur that leads to growth. These, too, make gladness possible; they warm the chambers of memory; they flood the consciousness with the rosy light of hope. But if the blood is poor, then the hormones languish, and the craving becomes fierce, stimulus is wanted more than food, and it is found in a ready-made poison. The ill-nourished have a smaller chance of reform than those who can eat good food, for they cannot, as it were, manufacture the true stimulant anew for themselves. Thus the food-and-drink question are nearly always, in so far as the poor are concerned, two sides of one question. The closing of public-houses to children and women is, of course, a step in the right direction. But it is only a step, not a goal.
Then there is another cause of disease of which school doctors did not speak for awhile, but of which they now speak freely enough. (It is true they are never reported, and there is still a conspiracy of silence on the matter.) This cause is—dirt, foulness of every description. Dr. Kerr puts it bluntly enough. "The majority of cases of injury to health," he writes, "may be traced originally to a want of cleanliness!" In one London school, which is of
