18 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



These cases are not like cretins which require to have 

 thyroid substance (for instance) given them all their lives, for 

 whenever the developmental processes are roused and the 

 general nutritive conditions attended to. things generally go on 

 normally without further need for interference. They illustrate 

 how a chemical inco-ordination may be dealt with and corrected 

 and how the mental acumen and capacity for education become 

 rapidly improved as development advances. There are many 

 grades of these cases to be found among older children, and there 

 is not the slightest use in trying to educate them until the 

 cellular chemistry and environment has been put to rights. 

 The surgeon corrects deformity of limb and muscle by 

 mechanical orthopoedics, but these cases constitute a chemical 

 deformity and their successful treatment depends upon a 

 chemical orthopoedics carried out on the lines concerning which 

 I have spoken. 



While dwelling upon this subject one is much tempted to 

 wander into paths of speculation concerning the effects of over- 

 stimulation or over-education in the way of perverting normal 

 function and normal character. These chemical problems have 

 a far-reaching importance and certainly have much to do with 

 the stamping of character. In the child the chemistry is the 

 chemistry of a child, and it differs entirely from that of the 

 man or woman into which it subsequently develops. Set the 

 chemistry going of the dull, apathetic, backward, ill-grown 

 child by augmenting the supply of some deficient substance, 

 necessary for the stimulation of the metabolism of its tissues, 

 and you convert it into a bright, cheerful, playful and normally 

 growing being, which goes on developing after the treatment 

 is stopped. The tissues learn the trick, so to speak, and 

 apparently themselves promote the reactions which provide for 

 their metabolism. So in the adult — some stimulus may give 

 rise to a progressive change in function or character which was 

 lying dormant. We know something about the action of the 



