542 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



HYGIENIC EEQUIEEMENTS IN THE PEINTING OF BOOKS 



AND PAPEES 



By Professor EDMUND B. HUEY 



WESTERN UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



r I THE cheapness and universal prevalence of printed matter, and the 

 -*- general enactment of compulsory education laws which fasten 

 the reading habit upon all, give the problems of the hygiene of read- 

 ing a universal and very great significance. This reading habit, when 

 one thinks of it, has become perhaps the most striking and important 

 artificial activity to which the human race has ever been molded. A 

 very considerable part of most people's waking time, whether in child- 

 hood or in adult life, is taken up with the contemplation of printed 

 or written rymbols. One is seldom out of sight of some sort of printed 

 or written matter, and the automatic functioning of the reading habit 

 keeps one reading away at whatever appears, though it be but the silliest 

 advertisement in a car or on a concert program. 



And yet this reading habit is an intensely artificial performance, 

 involving for both mind and eye and nervous mechanism, most delicate 

 of all products of evolution as these are, constant repetitions of func- 

 tionings which were not foreseen in their evolutionary development. 

 I discuss elsewhere the nature of these unusual functionings and the 

 causes of the fatigue and degeneration which have resulted from read- 

 ing, and which must continue more or less until the organs become 

 adapted to these requirements of modern civilization. The dangers 

 from the strain on mind and eye and nerves, in reading, will be ma- 

 terially lessened if the schools, especially, will honestly enforce certain 

 hygienic requirements that are now generally agreed upon, and state- 

 ments of which are easily accessible in such recent books as Shaw's 

 ' School Hygiene/ or in the more comprehensive work of Burgerstein 

 and Netolitzky. 



Probably the most important and most feasible means of lessening 

 the fatigue and strain of reading is by bringing about, so far as pos- 

 sible, that all books and papers shall be printed in such type and ar- 

 rangement as shall fall within certain recognized limits of hygienic 

 requirement. As to some of the requirements which should be made 

 of the printer we are still uncertain, and further experimental investi- 

 gation rather than the present excess of opinion is in order and is 

 cryingly needed. Of some requirements we can now be certain, and 



