It is of great importance to appreciate the fact that there may occur by reason of faulty diet serious damage to the young without the development of symptoms which definitely mark the patient as a sufferer from a deficiency disease. The latter cases are the rare exception. The most serious situation is that of hosts of children who suffer physical inferiority, and perhaps mental inferiority, abnormality of form and lowered vitality as the result of failure to secure in infancy and childhood a diet adequate to their needs. These children represent border-line conditions which usually pass unnoticed as cases of malnutrition. These are the children who frequently find their way into the school clinics and are forced to repeat their work in one or more of the grades, and whose teeth serve as a source of lifelong annoyance. I do not desire to minimize the importance of the after-effects of infectious diseases as a factor in swelling the number in this type of children. In a very large number of cases, however, there can be no longer any reasonable doubt that the most fundamental problem is that of securing for these children a wisely planned diet calculated to raise their vitality to a higher plane.