Manchester Memoirs, Vol. hi. (191 2), No. 5. 7 



smaller families may get better cared f(ir than those who 

 formerly came from larger families. 



Among tJie farees depressing to groivtJi are such diseases 

 as produce poisons capable of continuing in the system 

 for a long jjeriod, or which produce alterations in structure 

 of important organs : — rheumatism, inflammation of 

 pharynx and bronchi, and tuberculosis are examples of 

 the first ; rickets, enlarged tonsils, and adenoids are 

 examples of the second. All these exert a harmful 

 influence long after the disease which originated them has 

 disappeared. 



In my first scries of medical examinations, consisting 

 of about 250 boys, in recording the past medical history, 

 I mainh' paid attention to such illnesses of childhood as 

 scarlet fever, rheumatism, and diphtheria, since these 

 are generally acknowledged to exert an evil influence on 

 growth, and only included measles when I found that 

 there had been some accompan\-ing inflammation of the 

 lungs, etc. I found a larger proportion had suffered from 

 such early childhood illness in those boys who had 

 serious impairment in their vision than in the boys with 

 clear vision ; and so, in my next series of investigations, I 

 determined to pay much greater attention to this matter. 

 In the second series, I have only found two boys with 

 defective sight in whom I could not detect evident signs 

 of illness having occurred in the early years of childhood, 

 or where I could not obtain from the parents a history of 

 very severe illness having occurred during the first seven 

 years of life. I do not claim that the early illness was the 

 sole condition of defective sight, but I think it was a 

 precipitating or magnif)'ing cause, and if the illness had 

 not occurred it is probable that the onset of defective 

 sight might have been postponed, or at least its intensity 



