344 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



preventable, at least in part. It is the duty of the physician to recog- 

 nize and promptly rectify the evil effects of environment and training, 

 and in so far as possible of inheritance. Hence it is a most important 

 department of differentiation to possess clearly defined standards of 

 growth, proportion, activities, sensitiveness, functional competence, 

 intelligence and capacity for endurance. These standards should be 

 the product of wide observation, reading and experience, among normal 

 as well as abnormal conditions, but unless tempered by judgment, right 

 conclusions are not assured. 



The prototype for each teacher and physician is the ideal child, 

 a composite picture of normal children, and can not be formed too care- 

 fully by a thorough interpretation of all data at command. Next to 

 the ideal child the teacher should erect for himself standards with 

 permissible variants. In America we must not limit our attention to 

 children of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, but hold in view the many other 

 racial characteristics with which we are likely to come in contact. 

 There are crosses of the Latin, Celt, Slav, German, Hebrew and other 

 white races; also the hybrids of red, yellow and black races. These 

 modifications exhibit laws of their own, as yet by no means clear, but 

 deeply significant. Inheritance of tendencies is recognized as a poten- 

 tial factor. Predisposition to physical and moral derangement is an 

 obvious factor, admittedly forceful for harm. 



Difficulties of differentiation are many enough among children 

 normal in structure, in neural balance and in mind, but these grow 

 greater where constitutional variations or deviations are present. Hence 

 it is desirable to weigh variants in type, such as peculiar and excep- 

 tional children. The normal processes are profoundly modified by 

 peculiarities of temperament due to inheritance or acquired. E. W. 

 Bohannon in a statistical study of over 1,000 children {Pediatric Semi- 

 nary, Oct., 1894) covers the ground sufficiently to warrant using his 

 classification. The psychic factor demands deeper attention in peda- 

 gogics than ordinarily obtains. 



Bohannon formulates certain types of mental and physical con- 

 formation : 



These types are the .heavy, the tall, the stout, the small, the strong, the 

 weak, the deft, the agile, the clumsy, the beautiful, the ugly, the deformed, those 

 with birth marks, the keen and the mentally precocious, those with defects of 

 sense organs or mind, the nervous, the clean, the dainty, the dirty, the dis- 

 orderly, the teasing, the buoyant, buffoons, the cruel, the selfish, the generous, 

 the sympathetic, those with imagination, the liar, the ill-tempered, the silent, 

 the dignified, the frank, the loquacious, the inquisitive, the courageous, the 

 timid, the whining, the spoiled, the gluttonous, and ' the only child in a family.' 



Many of these types cross; several are liable to include similar 

 features, constituting composites of the types, making the study some- 

 what complicated if carried to legitimate conclusions. 



