Children who are half starved suffer in body and in mind: therefore they suffer in intelligence and in morals.
Says Dr. Hall, of Leeds:
It matters but little whether a child be born and bred in a palace or a cottage—of pure pedigree or mongrel—if he does not receive a proper supply of bone-making food he will not make a good bony framework, which is the first essential of true physical well-being.
Amongst the poor it is a common thing for children to want food: not to have enough food. This is not the fault of the children, but is due to the poverty of their parents.
But it is common also amongst the poor for children to be fed upon improper food. Quite young infants, babies, indeed, are often fed upon salt fish, rancid bacon, impure milk. Cases are too numerous in which babies are given beer, gin, coarse and badly cooked meat, inferior bread, and tea.
This is not the fault of the children, but is due to the ignorance of their parents.
The results of such feeding, and of such starvation, are weakness, poorness of blood, deafness, sore eyes, defective intelligence, rickets, epilepsy, convulsions, consumption; degeneration and death.
Professor Cunningham says:
One point which is established beyond all question is the remarkable influence which environment and nurture exercise upon the development and growth of the child, as well as upon the standard of physical excellence attained by the adult According to the statistics supplied to the British Association Committee, children vary to the extent of 5 in. in stature, and adults to the extent of 3 1/2 in. in stature, according as the circumstances under which they are reared are favourable or otherwise.
Dr. R. J. Collie, M.D., speaking of the mentally defective children in the London Board Schools, says: