348 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



and woe in its train ; it demoralizes the social, commercial and relig- 

 ious interests of whole communities. We therefore believe our duty 

 to the state, to the community, to the citizen, demands an adoption 

 of sanitary methods that will secure the greatest good to the great- 

 est number. The principles of sanitary science should be inculcated 

 and disseminated in the public-school system. In this intellectual 

 nursery of humanity are contained the brightest hopes for the future 

 of this republic. In its cradle are to be rocked the statesman, philos- 

 opher, scientist, and patriot. Physiology and hygiene are not orna- 

 mental branches of education, but essential, and should be thoroughly 

 instilled into the minds of the children. The public schools furnish 

 representatives from all classes and conditions of society, and they 

 reflect in a degree the physical, mental and moral characteristics of 

 the home. The opportunity for reaching those homes is afforded in 

 the schoolroom through efficient teachers. By the inventive mind 

 of the teacher every power is utilized and made subservient to the 

 principles inculcated in sanitary science. If the people are once in- 

 telligently informed with regard to their interest in these matters, 

 they will readily acquiesce — in fact, demand restrictive sanitary leg- 

 islation. 



I cannot refrain from quoting, at this point, from an address by 

 Doctor Gihon, medical director, U. S. A. : " So long, however, as society, 

 in its highest development of rank and culture, ignorantly jostles and 

 wedges itself in contracted parlors and drawing-rooms, already defiled 

 by blazing gas jets and defective furnaces, where hundreds of lavishly 

 dressed human machines befoul the air and poison one another with 

 the noxious gases and their own effete animal jjroducts in deadlier 

 quantity than the ragged rabble which herd in the open street, and 

 call this pleasure; so long as godly people drowse and yawn in badly 

 ventilated churches, surcharging their brains and impairing their 

 minds with blood not half aerated, and ungodly ones exhaust their 

 whole reserve force to resist the insanitary influence of the no less 

 badly ventilated theater and exhibition hall, and call the one pious 

 worship and the other rational amusement; so long as men toil to 

 amass riches and then build residences palatial, or sham palatial, and, 

 in the name of luxury and estheticism, flood them with artificial light 

 and heat, to consume the oxygen which prince and beggar must breathe, 

 and admit the invisible filth by the sumptuously decorated closet 

 and bath-room, by which they think to exclude the vile necessities 

 of humanity, which prince and beggar alike cannot escape, and call 

 this comfort and refinement ; so long as our children are sent to over- 

 crowded and unwholesome schools, where their eyes are bleared, their 

 hearing dulled, their plastic bodies distorted, and their brains fuddled, 

 and call this education; so long as men and women violate daily, ia^ 



