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The changes in the emotions, for instance, may lead to the recognition of a heart disease; lack of attention may be a hint of the overgrowth of the adenoids; irritability or apathy or delirious character of the mental behavior may indicate whether uræmic acid is in the system or an infectious disease: anæmia and undernutrition may be diagnosed and the psychology of fever demands too a much closer analysis with the means of the psychological laboratory than it has received so far.
That some poison, probably an oversecretion of the thymus, is responsible is shown by the relief obtainable by X-ray shrinkage of the gland, or the surgical removal of a part of it. Moreover, the gland is influenced by and influences the factors of body weight and growth with an extreme readiness and lability. Deficient general undernutrition leads to rapid decline in its weight.
In New York in this past winter, two things were observed which are undoubtedly closely connected increased undernutrition among school children, and decreased use of milk. The Mayor's Milk Committee in the fall of 1917 reported that the city as a whole had cut down its milk consumption 25 per cent, and certain tenement districts 50 per cent.
All the cereals can be effectively supplemented by milk and green vegetables. Then the diet will not be deficient in iron, which is not supplied in large enough amounts from white bread and milk. Oatmeal is the richest in iron of all the cereals. With such knowledge, we may alter our diet very greatly without danger of undernutrition.
These must be made to save not only wheat but meat, and for most of us also money. The cereal may furnish half the fuel value of the diet, partly bread-stuffs and partly in some of the other ways as suggested, without any danger of undernutrition.
Such baneful inheritances will some day be minimized by eugenic laws; and individuals whose abnormal mental condition makes them dangerous to society will be kept under permanent restraint. The causes of crime are, however, to a far greater degree environmental. Undernutrition, overwork, worry, and various other sources of poor health, create a condition of lowered resistance to impulse.
The other man, however, belongs to a race of rather taller men and women: his shortness of stature may be traced to undernutrition, or to overwork, or to sickness during his childhood. It is quite certain that a different kind of environment would have resulted in his being as tall as his brothers and sisters.
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