292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



What connection, if any, has moral instability to such physiological 

 abnormalities as impacted teeth, irritating conditions of sexual organs, 

 nasal occlusions, intestinal parasites and circulatory stagnations due to 

 over-much sitting? What is the relation of mental and physical 

 deficiency of children to alcoholism, syphilis, tuberculosis, or long 

 continued dietary insufficiency during the period of growth ? 



What is the relation of oral hygiene to general health? What 

 factors underlie the individual differences of children in predisposition 

 to dental caries ? How is this " disease of the people " related to 

 nutrition, both as cause and effect ? How is it related to school progress 

 and morals? Is Osier justified in asserting that the problem of oral 

 hygiene is of more consequence to racial welfare than is the alcohol 

 problem ? 



What influence upon educational practise may we expect from the 

 modern methods of roentgenographic determination of anatomic and 

 physiological age differences? How large are such differences among 

 children of the same chronological age? Does mental growth correlate 

 with skeletal development, or with physiological age as determined by 

 dentition and sexual maturity, or with chronological age, or with none 

 of these? Current methods of promotion tend to a gradation by 

 chronological age. Is it certain that this has more to commend it than 

 a classification on the basis of height or weight? What percentage of 

 school failures is due to subnormal physiological maturity ? Should we 

 always appeal to the roentgenograph to help decide doubtful cases of 

 promotion? How frequently is nervous overstrain connected with a 

 neglect of physiological age differences? 



What are the physiological effects, ultimate, as well as immediate, of 

 current methods in physical training? How are we to explain the 

 surprisingly unfavorable showing of athletes in life-insurance statistics ? 

 Is it frequently justifiable to subject children to "corrective" gymnas- 

 tic exercises in preference to free play? Just how, physiologically, 

 does exercise which is enjoyed differ in its effects from exercise which 

 is not enjoyed? Is the difference comparable to the difference found 

 by Pawlow in the secretion of saliva and gastric juice under varying 

 emotional conditions? What sports can safely be indulged in by chil- 

 dren of different ages? Can any one state authoritatively what per- 

 centage of 16-year-old boys ought to attempt the five mile run? Might 

 not research (research along these lines is now as rare as it is precious) 

 teach us more reliable methods of diagnosticating athletic fitness and 

 unfitness? (Professor Clark Hetherington is authority for the state- 

 ment that not one physician in a thousand can make this determina- 

 tion.) What are the permissible limits of athletic specialization? 

 What is the relation of muscular power to mortality and morbidity? 

 Is current playground and gymnastic instruction sufficiently differ- 

 entiated for age and sex differences? How far may physical training 



