1869.] Natural Science i?i Schools. 385 



ignorance of the most ordinary laws that regulate human life. The 

 rudiments of physiology could not be taught in nine-tenths of the 

 schools of Great Britain without rebuking the disregard paid to its 

 laws in the ventilation of rooms, the distribution of the hours of 

 study and relaxation, the conduct of exercises, and a hundred other 

 points connected with health. The homes of the poor and middle 

 classes of tliis country are the constant sources of disease and death, 

 not because of poverty or injudicious economy, but from sheer igno- 

 rance of the simplest laws by which God provides for the health 

 and life of his creatures. The whole country is full of mourning 

 for those who are stricken down with fevers and other contagious 

 diseases, with scrofula and consumption, yet it can be demonstrated 

 that the larger proportion of these diseases could be prevented 

 by a knowledge of the preventible causes of disease and death. 

 To defer teaching this subject till it can be taught at some distant 

 time after school-days are over, is to forego one of the greatest advan- 

 tages that can be conferred in teaching the natural sciences at all. 

 This subject is seldom taught, and to no class completely except to 

 the medical profession ; and although they have done nobly in urging 

 upon the public mind the necessity of sanitary legislation arising 

 out of their physiological studies, there is no public opinion to 

 sustain sanitary law. Our legislators, our clergymen, our judges, 

 our vestrymen, our electors, our people, are alike ignorant of the 

 structure and functions of the bodies they live in, and disease and 

 death stalk through the land from year to year with undiminished 

 strides. The great hope of the sanitary reformer lies in the intro- 

 duction into schools of the teaching such an amount of physiological 

 knowledge as would form a public opinion that would second the 

 efforts of the Legislature to secure for the people of England houses 

 and homes free from the easily preventible causes of disease and 

 death. 



But, dwelling on this subject for a little, let us suppose that no 

 effort is made in a school to introduce natural science as a means of 

 training the intellect of the scholar ; has not physiology a higher 

 claim to attention than most of the subjects introduced into reading 

 lessons? The favourite subjects for such exercises are history, 

 geography, and natural history. Such reading is extensively 

 introduced into our lower schools and into guds' schools. Everybody 

 is agreed that children must read about something ; and if this is 

 the case, why should they not read about the structure of their own 

 bodies and the functions on which their life depends ? Surely it 

 would be as well that the time for reading should be occupied in 

 an account of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood or 

 Jenner's more important discovery of the prevention of small-pox 

 by vaccination, as on the invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar or 

 the discovery of America by Columbus. Even the inveterate pre- 



