Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/245

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adjustment is exceedingly difficult. They seem to be unable to hold long to any one course and they sink before the slightest waves of circumstance. With such persons, and with many others, our very ignorance often renders us incapable of helping where help is needed. Just as before the discovery of the antitoxins for diphtheria and tetanus hundreds of people died whose lives might have been prolonged, so, for the lack of knowledge of many things we are unable to aid individuals in the making of adjustments that in the future may be facilitated through the development of new techniques. There are limitations, also, of physique and environment which prevent the person in trouble from achieving anything but a life that, judged by the standards of persons of greater opportunity and endowment, would at best be unsatisfactory. There are great handicaps in the absence of the institutions which in time our municipalities and states will establish. It may be evident that the only solution of a man's difficulties lies in a stay in a psychopathic hospital, but if there is no room for him he must forego treatment. The same issue arises in dealing with feeble-mindedness, in the treatment of tuberculosis, andin many other problems. Small wonder is it