Abstract
WHEN it became necessary during the European War of 1914–18 to assess the physical development and capacities of every man of military age in the British Isles, certain facts emerged which caused no little consternation when they were revealed at a later date. An unduly and unexpectedly large proportion of enrolled men were found to be physically unfit for the more strenuous forms of active service, and many, indeed too many, incapable of any form of military duty abroad. Yet it may be noted that by August 1914, legislation for the medical inspection of school children—the only large-scale provision for the accumulation of evidence relating to the physical condition of the population of Great Britain—had been in force for seven years; and more than one medical officer for education had directed attention in his reports to whole areas in which a relatively poor physique and under-development pointed to a probability of chronic malnutrition and adverse social and economic conditions. Had these warnings not been ignored, it would have been unnecessary to point out for the benefit of those who expressed in strongest terms their surprise and consternation at the results of this, the first, approach to something in the nature of a physical census of a considerable proportion of the British population, that in this instance, if ever, the child might be regarded as indeed ‘the father of the man’. Study of what the child was known to have been would have discounted surprise at the man he had become.
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Physical Anthropology and Problems of Modern Society. Nature 144, 797–799 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144797a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144797a0