16 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



times to brighten them up and prevent the necessity for their 

 being sent to special schools. Backwardness has to be sharply 

 distinguished from idiocy or mental defect ; the one is due to 

 chemical faults, the other very generally is related to altered 

 structure. Children are more or less like plants, insomuch that 

 if the soil in which their cells grow is unsuited for them, or if it 

 contains anything which tends to damage them, stunted growth, 

 stunted intellect and stunted function result, and stupidity in 

 school should lead to a careful enquiry as to its cause, which, 

 if a nutritive or chemical one, can often be dealt with and 

 rectified. Simple backwardness often dates from a very early 

 period of the child's life. It means slowness of development, 

 so that the child is to be regarded as being really considerably 

 younger than its years, and consequently it is in every respect 

 below standard. It is commoner among children of the poor 

 and among the neglected than among the better to do, and 

 consequently in industrial schools we see a good deal of it. 

 It accounts, for instance, for some of the large number of cases 

 of incontinence of urine and kindred troubles, which are so 

 common in these schools, conditions which are not infrequently 

 speedily cured by attending to the child's faulty chemistry. 



I need not go into details regarding the clinical features of 

 these backward cases — how they do not learn to speak perhaps 

 until their fifth or sixth year, how the intestinal functions remain 

 infantile, how the lengths of the limbs remain like those of 

 younger children and so forth, but by way of emphasising 

 the general slowness of the nervous system which is apt to 

 characterise them, I show you two little girls, each aged four 

 years. One of them is normal so far as her nerves and mental 

 condition are concerned ; she is bright, alert, every muscular 

 movement sharp and her arms and legs normal in length. She 

 is active and hardly still for a moment, her energies always 

 seeking an outlet in some kind of movement or another. The 

 other is a backward child ; she is passive in character and 



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