THE EFFECT OF IMPROGVEMENT IN NUTRITION ON THE MENTAL CAPACITY OF YOUNG CHILDREN

Abstract

The influence of malnutrition in retarding mental development in infancy and early childhood is a subject worthy of serious consideration. Mental activity is a form of energy and the expression of mental capacity depends upon mental energy and mental effort. Mental capacity itself is dependent upon the development of the brain cells and these as well as other parts of the body must be nourished in order to attain their normal growth. It has been shown by experiments on rats that normal rats are far superior in their learning ability to rats which have been deprived of Vitamin B during their nursing period (1, 2, 3, 4). Rachitic children compared with non-rachitic children, carefully paired, in the ages of 12 months, 18 months and 24 months show a lower developmental rating (5). The difficulty in formulating a study of this type with human subjects lies in the fact that reliable mental records of malnourished or undernourished young children are rarely available in numbers sufficient for scientific analysis. If malnutrition is complicated by other factors which tend to retard mental growth, the case is valueless for a study of the effect of malnutrition. Loss of mental control through epilepsy, meningitis, encephalitis, paralysis, glandular dysfunction and the like is not calculable in terms of constants. These diseases often are accompanied by malnutrition, and institutional files abound in records showing these complications. When records are available, there must be an interval of nutritional care, and a re-test to note changes in mental status. Another requirement is a control group of children of a normal nutritional status at the time of the first test with a record of normality in this respect in the interval and at the time of the re-test.