so 



The results of these investigations may be briefly 

 summed up. Ventilation and cleanliness are not suffi- 

 ciently attended to, the importance of the former being 

 clearly shown in one school in particular, where a reduction 

 of nearly twenty per cent, in the number sick followed this 

 improvement. The majority of Infant Schools are situated 

 in cellars, which are frequently under churches and other 

 places of worship. Now these cellars, with few exceptions, 

 are wholly unfitted for the purposes to which they are 

 applied, being often damp, always insufficiently lighted, 

 and never ventilated. The few private schools examined are 

 infinitely worse than the public schools, the children being 

 crowded together in small rooms, so imperfectly ventilated, 

 that they breathe an atmosphere which would prove fatal in a 

 short time to many classes of animals. To mention an ex- 

 ample : about fifty children were found shut up in a room 

 about fifteen feet square, having only one window, and that 

 partly blocked up ; and to sharpen their intellects the children 

 were not allowed time for dinner, or any interval for relax- 

 ation in the middle of the day. The same room served as 

 a dormitory and for other domestic purposes. 



Mr. Balman then adverted to some of the more pro- 

 minent defects existing in these Schools, and dwelt at some 

 length on the insufficient manner in which most of them 

 were lighted ; the necessity of solar light in producing the 

 rapid growth and cine assimilation of the vegetable secretions 

 was so obvious as scarcely to require any proofs. He also de- 

 tailed some experiments regarding its immediate action upon 

 the animal functions generally, which left but little doubt that 

 light exercised a marked influence upon the development of 

 the different structures of the human body. That light is a 

 preventative of disease, the observations of Sir James Wylie 

 conclusively show. He states that the cases of disease on 

 the dark side of an extensive barrack at St. Petersburgh 

 have been uniformly for many years in the proportion of 

 three to one to those on the side exposed to strong light 



