LEARNING AND HEALTH. 



403 



ral ruddiness and strength of the spring-time of 

 life. 



There is a third class of children who, least 

 fortunate, lie between the rich and the poor, 

 and who belong to the middle trading-classes. 

 The parents of these children are anxious, for 

 the most correct of motives, that their young 

 people shall not run wild in the streets to mix 

 with children who are of a different class and 

 under different influences. At the same time, 

 they are unable to send their children out to the 

 parks or suburbs, as their wealthier neighbors 

 are. The consequence is, that these children are 

 kept close at home or at school. They have to 

 live in small rooms badly ventilated or irregularly 

 ventilated, and, albeit they are well clothed and 

 well fed and comfortably bedded, they grow up 

 all but universally unhealthy. 



These children are they who specially suffer 

 from too close work at books and educational 

 labor generally. They are usually very pale, 

 muscularly feeble, and depressed in mind. They 

 grow up irresolute, and yield a large — by far the 

 largest — number of those who fill up the death- 

 roll of that disease of fatal diseases, pulmonary 

 consumption. 



For fourteen years of my life I was physician 

 to one of the hospitals in this metropolis, to 

 which so many of those who are afflicted with 

 consumption find their way. Twice, and occa- 

 sionally three times a week, the duty of inquiry 

 into the origin of this disease came to my share 

 of professional work. The field of observation 

 was extensive, and no fact was yielded in it so 

 definitely as this fact, that the larger proportion 

 of the consumptive population have been brought 

 up under the conditions I have named above : 

 in close school-rooms, during school-hours far too 

 prolonged, and then in close rooms at home, 

 where other work, in confined space, filled the 

 remaining lifetime. 



It is to be confessed that many practical diffi- 

 culties lie in the way of parents of children of 

 the classes I have just named. But there are no 

 insurmountable difficulties to improvement. An 

 intelligent public demand for an improvement 

 would very soon lead to an extension of what are 

 called garden-schools for the young, in which 

 teaching by amusing lessons, or games of learn- 

 ing, in a pure air and in ample space, would se- 

 cure all the advantages which are now so much 

 desired. In our large and splendid board-schools, 

 which are becoming distinct and beautiful social 

 features of the age, something toward this sys- 

 tem is approached, if not attained. 



EDUCATION IN BOYHOOD. 



In the education which is bestowed on the 

 young in the next stage of life — I mean on those 

 who are passing from the eleventh to the six- 

 teenth or seventeenth year of life — the errors 

 committed in respect to health are often as pro- 

 nounced as in the earlier stage. 



This period of life is in many respects ex- 

 tremely critical. The rapid growth of the organs 

 of the body, the still imperfect aud imperfected 

 condition of the most vital organs : the quick 

 changing, and yet steadily developing, form of 

 mind, which, like the handwriting, is now being 

 constructed : the imitative tendency of the mind : 

 and, not to name other peculiarities, the intensity 

 of feelings in the way of likes and hates — all these 

 conditions, physical and mental, make this stage 

 of a human career singularly liable to disorders 

 of a functional or even of an organic kind. For 

 one organ of the body, or for one propensity of 

 the mind, to .outgrow or out-develop another or 

 others, is the easiest of all proceedings in this 

 stage of life, unless care be taken to preserve a 

 correct balance. 



The lines of error carried out in this period 

 run in three directions at least, all tending to im- 

 pair the healthy and natural growth. The first 

 of these errors is overwork., which often is useless 

 overwork. The second is deficient skill or care 

 in detecting the natural character of ability ; in 

 other words, the turn of mind, and it may be said 

 capability, of the learner. The third is the sys- 

 tem of forcing the mind into needless competi- 

 tions, by which passions which are not intellect- 

 ual but animal feed the intellectual soul with de- 

 sire, and, by creating an over-development of the 

 nervous-physical seats of passion, make or breed 

 a soul of passions which may never be put out in 

 after-life, until itself puts out the life abruptly by 

 the weariness it inflicts. 



I have sketched from a trustworthy record the 

 work of learning imposed on a pale and nervous 

 boy at a school the discipline of which is by some 

 felt to be rather light than heavy. Any four 

 of the subjects therein named were really suffi- 

 cient to occupy all the natural powers for work of 

 that young mind. Five of the subjects, Latin or 

 Greek, English, arithmetic, history, and French or 

 German language, with writing superadded as an 

 exercise, would be the extreme of lesson-work a 

 prudent care would suggest. For these exercises 

 of the mind eight hours of work would be neces- 

 sary, and if this period of labor were enforced, 

 with two hours for meals and ablutions, and four 



