Dr. Henry P. Walcott, spoke yesterday evening at the College Conference meeting in Sever 11, on "The Health of Studenst."

The subject, said Dr. Walcott, is so large that many deficiencies in treatment are inevitable. In the first place, how can we tell what the health of a given body of men may be? Only, strangely enough, by the death rate. Fifty years ago in England, competent officers were appointed in every parish to collect its vital statistics, and now the government publishes yearly a volume of about nine hundred pages, so accurately compiled that all inferences about the health of the modern world are based upon it. In Massachusetts the same system has been adopted and an excellent yearly report is now published. The national census is also rich in vital statistics for the years in which it is taken.

In 1880 Cambridge stood at the head of the list of 45 cities in the union in which trustworthy statistics were taken. Its death rate was only 17.5 in 1000 while the death rate in the whole state of Massachusetts was about 20 in 1000. The death rate in the state between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five is only eight or nine in one thousand. In the district of Cambridge in which the college buildings are situated, the death rate is only about nine in one thousand for all ages, no higher than the death rate for the most favored ages in the state at large. Thus it will be seen that Harvard college is in a peculiarly healthy position. It is impossible to ascertain exactly what the mortality of the students is in any given year, for when a man falls sick he leaves college, and the authorities may never know whether he recovers or dies. But it is safe to assert from the experience of the physicians practicing in Cambridge that the death rate in college is only about half as high as that of the general community of the same age surrounding it. It is also impossible to collect statistics showing of what diseases college men die, but it is probable that there is no disease in anyway peculiar to them. One fifth of the community die of contagious diseases, but from these college men suffer very little. From small pox no intelligent community need suffer. A vaccination in early life, however, does not retain its virtue always, and if there are men in college who have not been vaccinated since thirteen or four-teen they had better be so now. Typhoid fever is the contagious disease most likely to make headway in a body of students. The danger would be most likely to come from an impure water supply. It is utterly impossible for a man to protect himself as an individual from such danger but he can support the public authorities whose business it is to look out for the general health.

A student comes to Cambridge generally when his habits of life are well formed, and probably very few changes in them will take place here. It may be as well to make a few dogmatic statements concerning them. It has been shown beyond question by the experience of the great military schools in Germany, where supervision is perfect, that the early use of tobacco is altogether bad, though it has far less influence in some than in others. In regard to alcohol, German testimony is more conflicting; and beer is still given in the military schools, but there is little doubt that its effect is injurious rather than other wise. Before middle life, at any rate, it should be merely medicine and taken in extreme moderation. In regard to ventilation it may be said that certain recitation rooms in Harvard are very poorly ventilated, worse than the worst in Tewksbury. The Kidder Technology building was erected with a special view to good ventilation, and the instructors feel certain that the work done in it is much better than that done in the old building. As for athletics, the best for the college are those that are most general. Intercollegiate athletics are a good thing, but must be regarded as a means to an end. There is a great need of reform in training. There is no reason, for example, why a diet on which men have flourished all their lives should be thrown away, and a disagreeable one substituted.

After Dr. Walcott had concluded his lecture many questions were asked him by men from the floor, most of them of a practical nature.