Furthermore, he pointed out, the agricultural population was worse fed than the urban inhabitants, their occupation did not provide adequate intellectual stimulation, and that the children were starved and stunted. Consequently,they tended to suffer from dementia and imbecility. Here was a clear hint that an approach to a possible understanding of the relation of social factors to mental disorders would be to consider the distributions of various mental illnesses in time and space, and to see how they were connected with the characteristics of various population groups.