Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/194

 have gone through the eight years of school life and children of the same age in 1896, when school doctor's work was fairly started. And then it is well known that through the eight years of elementary school life—say from six to fourteen—children do grow out of certain weaknesses, and the life risks are getting less. Infancy's miseries wither in this impulse; they are sloughed off like a withered sheath, in the children who escape. So the following table, though it is interesting and clearly indicates that school life has strengthened rather than (as in old days) injured the scholars, does not, of course, offer the full and complete evidence which will be, we believe, soon forthcoming. (The classes are numbered, it seems, in the reverse order of ours. Thus our ex-seventh and highest standard is called the first here, and the lowest—our first standard—is called the eighth.)