THE ALIMENTARY EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 1 



By Maecel Labbe. 

 Professor of the College of Medicine of Paris, Physician at the Charity Hospital. 



A good diet is the first consideration in obtaining good health. 

 Besides providing, one should know how to nourish oneself. 



This can be taught. I am not of the opinion of J. J. Rousseau, 

 who states that man left to himself will naturally live right and will 

 never have indigestion. No more do I believe with H. Spencer that a 

 child's appetite is a judicious guide for it. Though hereditary in- 

 stinct is sufficient for animals, it does not seem that it would be a 

 suitable guide for man, who is, from the point of view of hygiene, the 

 least rational of the animals. An alimentary education is, then, 

 indispensable. 



It should be commenced early. It is, in fact, during the growing 

 period that benefit or harm from the diet reacts most strongly on the 

 health. It is during the first years of life that habits are formed, 

 that reflexes are created, which later direct the entire organic life of 

 the individual. It is easy to act on the plastic nervous system of the 

 child in order to instil into it good habits just as it would be diffi- 

 cult to uproot vices to which the adult has become accustomed. 



Alimentary education should, then, be addressed above all to 

 children. This idea is not new ; the Persians of the heroic ages had 

 already felt the truth of it. We read in Montaigne that the educa- 

 tion of the eldest son of the king was entrusted to four teachers, one 

 of whom was the most temperate man of the kingdom. 



The Americans of to-day think, in the same way, that in order to 

 accomplish the hygienic education of the people, it is necessary to 

 commence by training the children, who are the men and women of 

 to-morrow, and it is on them that is brought to bear the principal 

 effort in the prevention of tuberculosis and in instruction in ali- 

 mentary hygiene. For these reasons I will discuss this vital question : 

 The alimentary education of children. 



The methods of instruction have been much discussed. Each has 

 extolled his own. With Henri Labbe, I am of the opinion that we 



1 Lecture given at the Sorbonne. Translated by permission from the Revue Scientiflque, 

 Sept. 10, 1921. (Translator's Note. — This article, of course, presents the subject chiefly 

 as it relates to France, though it also has a general application of interest everywhere.) 



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