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    [Illustration: A GOOD SPORT FOR GIRLS AND BOYS]



THE WOODS HUTCHINSON HEALTH SERIES



THE CHILD'S DAY


BY


WOODS HUTCHINSON, A.M., M.D.


Sometime Professor of Anatomy, University of Iowa; Professor of
Comparative Pathology and Methods of Science Teaching, University of
Buffalo; Lecturer, London Medical Graduates' College and University of
London; and State Health Officer of Oregon. Author of "Preventable
Diseases," "Conquest of Consumption," "Instinct and Health," and "A
Handbook of Health."



HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON   NEW YORK    CHICAGO


COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY WOODS HUTCHINSON




FOREWORD


"If youth only knew, if old age only could!" lamented the philosopher.
What is the use, say some, of putting ideas about disease into
children's heads and making them fussy about their health and anxious
before their time?

Precisely because ideas about disease are far less hurtful than
disease itself, and because the period for richest returns from
sensible living is childhood--and the earlier the better.

It is abundantly worth while to teach a child how to protect his
health and build up his strength; too many of us only begin to take
thought of our health when it is too late to do us much good. Almost
everything is possible in childhood. The heaviest life handicaps can
be fed and played and trained out of existence in a child. Even the
most rudimentary knowledge, the simplest and crudest of precautions,
in childhood may make all the difference between misery and happiness,
success and failure in life.

Our greatest asset for healthful living is that most of the unspoiled
instincts, the primitive likes and dislikes, of the child point in the
right direction. There is no need to tell children to eat, to play, to
sleep,