12s. to 70.8 / 20 / 80 3.6 2.2 1.4 14s. The wages are the total weekly income out of which everything has to be paid, including rent, which varies from 4s. to 7s. 6d. ("The Influence of Wages on the Child's Nutrition," by F. E. Larkins, M.D. Edin., D.P.H., late Assistant School Medical Officer for Surrey, in _The Medical Officer_, December 17, 1910, p. 347.) The effect of education is, as was recognised thirty years ago, to intensify the evil of malnutrition. "To educate underfed children," says Dr. Leslie Mackenzie, "is to promote deterioration of physique by exhausting the nervous system. Education of the underfed is a positive evil."[481] "Defective nutrition," says the School Medical Officer for Blackburn, "to a far greater extent than any other single cause, and probably more than all other causes combined, renders children incapable of education. In a growing child the demands of muscle and bone must be satisfied before those of nervous tissue, and consequently when there is deficiency, or what comes to the same thing, unsuitability of food or inability to assimilate it, the nervous system is the first to suffer, the brain is starved and anaemic, and the extra strain involved in school work can have only a harmful, and in some cases a disastrous result."[482] "There is probably no disease of children," says another School Medical Officer, "which needs combating more than bad nutrition.... It is quite impossible for any child thus affected to compete mentally with normal children of similar age; in fact, mental defect is frequently found in association with malnutrition."[483] Footnote 481: _The Medical Inspection of School Children_, by Dr. W. Leslie Mackenzie, assisted by Dr. E. Matthew, 1904, p. 196. Footnote 482: Report of the School Medical Officer for Blackburn for 1911, p. 190. Footnote 483: Report of the School Medical Officer for Leeds for 1912, p. 30. This relation of mental capacity to nutrition was exemplified in the figures quoted by Dr. Ralph Crowley at the Education Conference in 1907. He examined 1,840 children in elementary schools at Bradford, and classified them according to their nutrition and intelligence. Of the children of exceptional intelligence, 62.7 per cent. were of good nutrition, 35.6 per cent. were below normal, and 1.7 per cent. were of poor or very poor nutrition. Of the children who were exceptionally dull, only 24.9 per cent. were of good nutrition, 39.5 were below normal, and no less than 35.6 poor or very poor.[484] Footnote 484: "The Physical Conditions of School Children," by Dr. Ralph H. Crowley, North of England Education Conference, January, 1907 (reprinted in the _School Government Chronicle_, Supplement, January 12, 1907, pp. 80-81).