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LABOUR AND CHILDHOOD

incalculably more rapid than the careering of animals or the flowing of rivers.

When this forward movement is checked, the result is something that is not to be argued with. The adolescent in whom it takes place cannot find any antidote for it in what is said to him, as a rule. He is as helpless to use words as a cure as he would be to use a peroration to turn back a threatened attack of influenza. His symptoms are faults, but they are mere symptoms all the same. Dr. Kerr has shown how the very violence of his mode of enjoying himself is the result of an instinctive need to flush neglected brain areas. But as for finding anew the zest and ardour of mental life, how is that to be done when the very material out of which it is born has been lost?

The advent of the school doctor has made it possible to study the real problems involved in these successes and failures in a new way, and with fresh courage. Every one of them has its roots in the growing organism—and the task before the school doctor is to discern these, and to set them in the light. Just as the home and hospital doctor has to know something of the mechanisms involved in eating and drinking, in swallowing and digestion, so the school doctor has to study the brain, the organ of