SCHOOL LIFE, GROWTH, AND HEALTH. 109 



third period, continuing to the end of November, in which the 

 increase in height is very small and the gain in weight very- 

 large. The daily accession of weight is often three times as great 

 as during the winter months ; and an earlier beginning of the 

 summer vacation will be accompanied by a stronger growth in 

 weight during the holiday time. These facts are of great moment 

 in aiding to determine the best arrangement of vacations an im- 

 portant question in school management. 



From this discussion of the different phases in their growth I 

 pass to the diseases of our school children. First, according to 

 my examinations of fifteen thousand boys in the middle schools, 

 more than one third are ill or are afflicted with chronic maladies. 

 Short-sightedness, which is demonstrably for the most part in- 

 duced by the overtaxing of the eyes in school-work, and well 

 merits the name of school -sickness, rises rapidly in height of 

 prevalence from class to class. Thirteen and a half per cent of 

 the boys suffer from habitual headache, and nearly thirteen per 

 cent are pallid ; and other diseases arise in the lower classes and 

 then decline to rise again in the upper classes. Diseases of the 

 lungs are most frequent among organic disorders. Diseases of 

 the heart and intestinal disorders show a considerable tendency to 

 increase in the higher classes. As to the average of illness in the 

 different classes, it appears that in Stockholm seventeen per cent 

 of the children in the first class were ill at the end of the first 

 school year. In the second school year the illness-curve rose to 

 thirty-seven per cent, and in the fourth class to forty per cent. 

 This remarkable increase of illness during the first school year is 

 not casual, but is exhibited in all the schools ; and corresponding 

 conditions were brought to light in the examinations of Danish 

 pupils. A sigkness ratio of 34*4 per cent was found as early as in 

 the lowest classes of the middle schools. The illness-curve rose 

 in the first classes, reached its first maximum in the third class, 

 then sunk and rose again in the upper classes. These wavering 

 conditions can not be founded in the organization of the school. 

 The burden of work on the pupil rises incessantly from class to 

 class, and the boys live continuously under the same hygienic con- 

 ditions in the same places, and in the same school and parental 

 houses. There must be a deeper underlying cause. A look at the 

 growth-periods of the boys shows that the remarkable rise of the 

 sickness-curve in the preparatory schools and the lower classes of 

 the middle schools occurs exactly during the period from seven or 

 eight years to thirteen years, the very time that has been shown 

 to be one of weaker growth in boys. But as soon as the stronger 

 growth of puberty sets in, and especially during the last years of 

 that period, when the gain in weight is most rapid, the curve sinks 

 from class to class, from year to year, till the year in which the 



