At the suggestion of our president, this meeting of the American Child Health Association is to consider:
How far have we come? What have we accomplished? What is our next step?
The all wise program committee has decided that a brief outline of child health work in the past would be a suitable background—a sort of dark gloomy curtain, as it were, to make our present activities stand out. I have been ordered to present the Gloom. One is apt to feel that it was only in the past, the dim past, that things were bad.
I have nothing new to offer. Twice the subject has been presented before the ancestors of this association, in the form of a presidential address; in 1913, by the late Dr. Holt, and in 1921, by Dr. Shaw. I can only hope to recall certain things which in the ever changing, ever widening field