SYMPOSIUM OX COXSERVATIOX 33 



general conduct of life on account of minor ailments cannot be 

 estimated except perhaps as time lost. A study of the matter 

 shows that the time lost cannot be less than four days annually 

 to each supposedly well man. Applying this to the wage-earners 

 of Illinois, counting one wage-earner to each five people, making 

 650,000 in all. and this State has to pocket an annual loss of 

 2,600.000 days, or 7.150 years. This is certainly a prodigious loss 

 to suffer because of minor ailments, all of which can practically 

 be avoided by proper public and private hygiene. 



Xeurasthenia, so common in the United States, is one of the 

 most serious and insidious introductions to grave disorders, which 

 may be due to depraved nutrition, to needless worry, or failure to 

 have adequate recreation. 



SCHOOL HYGIEXE. 



In consersing vitality, the child must have physical defects 

 removed as far as possible, then must be brought up amidst 

 healthful surroundings and itself trained in all that conserves 

 health. Indiana has already taken steps in this direction. The 

 sixty-seventh General Assembly ordained that the schoolhouses 

 hereafter built shall be sanitary in all particulars. This means 

 that waste of money and waste of child strength and happiness 

 shall cease in this fair State, so far as this one matter goes. The 

 same assembly has given permission to school authorities to insti- 

 tute medical inspection of school children, that they may be 

 relieved of morbid physical conditions which cause pain, ineffi- 

 ciency, illness and early death. It was a marked forward step to 

 grant this privilege, but it was a mistake in favor of loss of vital- 

 ity not to make this care of children compulsory. Physical 

 strength is the fundamental requirement for the making of chil- 

 dren into educated and moral citizens. There is now a world- 

 wide movement, led by Switzerland and heathen Japan, to save 

 children and make them strong. A Japanese physician traveling 

 in this countr)' said : '"We have relatively fewer short graves in 

 our cemeteries." The intelligence of a community could be accu- 

 rately measured by determining its relative number of short 

 graves. Youth is the time to serve the Lord. We must train the 

 body in youth as well as the mind, or the opportunity to conserve 

 vitality is largely lost. A far better business scheme than secur- 

 ing factories would be for the business men to turn their atten- 

 tion to the conservation of human vitality. The returns would be 

 immense; failure to score in such an effort is impossible. 



