EDUCATION IN INFANT HYGIENE : DISCUSSION 299 



of education fitted for themselves and disregard that which 

 was totally unfit even for men ? Did anyone imagine for 

 a single instant if, as might well have happened, women 

 had first struck upon the idea of education, they would have 

 attempted to impose the same education on boys? If they 

 had they would soon have seen their mistake because boys 

 would have jibbed at it and would not have accepted it. 

 He trusted that they would endorse the resolution he had 

 read in order that they might enable those in New Zealand, 

 who might perhaps be able to turn more quickly sometimes, 

 to do something for the womanhood in that country. He 

 did not know whether it was in order to propose the resolu- 

 tion, but he would like the meeting to endorse it if it could 

 be put to the meeting, as by so doing they would be 

 benefiting the women of New Zealand. 



The CHAIRMAN said it had been decided by the Executive 

 Committee that no resolutions should be submitted to the 

 sections of the Conference, but all resolutions would be 

 carefully considered by the Committee, and those which it 

 was considered advisable to bring forward would be sub- 

 mitted to the Conference as a whole on the following day. 



Dr. MARY BOOTH (Australia) said she thought that some- 

 times at Conferences like that they took up too much time 

 in proving the fact of infantile mortality. Dr. Caroline 

 Hedger had made a big step forward in striving to get at 

 the cause of it. She felt so very strongly the truth of the 

 facts which had been brought forward by the author because 

 she had acted as School Medical Officer in New South 

 Wales, and she found that particularly in the High Schools, 

 where girls were of the adolescent age, the effects of over- 

 pressure were apparent in a large majority of the students. 

 As Dr. Hedger said, a few showed no evidence at all, but 

 were full of vitality; their work was easy to them and they 

 left school apparently none the worse for it. But the large 

 majority showed many minor signs of depressed vitality 

 such as headache, loss of tone in the skin, pallor, in some 

 cases mental sluggishness and loss of memory, which was 

 rather extraordinary in girls from 14 to 16 and 17 years of 

 age. When one inquired into their work one found that 

 what would take a bright girl one hour or one and a half 

 hours to do would take these other girls about three hours 

 to do, and although this was supposed to be discounten- 

 anced by the headmistress of the school the class teachers 

 could not get control of it. Many of the girls, being at 

 the school at considerable sacrifice on the part of their 

 parents, felt bound to keep their place in the class, with 

 the physical results she had referred to. She concentrated 



