y to breathe through the nose and inability to see clearly
right from wrong and inability to want to do what teachers and parents
wish. Physical examinations show now, and might just as well have shown
fifty years ago, that the great majority of truants and juvenile
offenders have adenoids and enlarged tonsils. A recent examination made
by the New York board of health on 150 children in one school made up
from the truant school, the juvenile court, and Randall's Island,
showed that only three were without some physical defect and that 137
had adenoids and large tonsils. Dickens wrote his observations in 1860;
in 1854 the New York Juvenile Asylum was started, and up to 1908 cared
for 40,000 children; in 1860 William Meyer pointed out, so that no one
need misunderstand, the harmful effects of adenoids. What would have
been the story of juvenile waywardness, of sickness, of educational
advancement, had examinations for defective breathing been started in
1853 or 1860 instead of 1905; if one per cent of the attention that has
been given to teaching mouth breathers the ten commandments had been
spent on removing the nasal obstructions to intelligence?

[Illustration: A "DEGENERATE" MADE NORMAL BY REMOVAL OF
ADENOIDS]

William Hegel, who is pictured on page 48, before his tonsils and
adenoids were removed was described by his father in this way: "When
playing with other boys on the street he seems dazed, and sluggish to
grasp the various situations occurring in the course of the game. When
he decides to do something he runs in a heedless, senseless way, as if
running away,--will bump against something, pedestrian or building,
before he comes to himself; seems dazed all the time. When told
something by his mother he giggles in the most exasperating way, for
which he receives a whipping quite often." The father said the whipping
was of no avail. The child was restless, talkative, and snored during
sleep. He had an insatiable appetite. He was removed or transferred
from five different schools in New York City. To get redress the father
took him to the board of education, whence he was referred to the
assistant chief medical inspector of the department of health, whose
examination revealed immensely large fungous-looking tonsils and
excessive pharyngeal granulations (adenoids). He was operated on at a
clinic. The tonsils and adenoids removed are pictured on the opposite
page, reduced one third. After the operation the ch