300 MEDICAL SECTION 



herself on this aspect of the question for some time. She 

 was there for about two years, and she was sorry to say 

 with practically no result. The assistant teacher had not 

 had the necessary education perhaps to appreciate or 

 thoroughly understand what they were trying to drive home, 

 and would often herself give support to the fact that the 

 girls were at too high a pressure and that the whole 

 system was such that the teacher and the child could hardly 

 escape from it. Therefore one welcomed a statement of 

 the case like this with figures which must alter the whole 

 mental attitude of the education authorities to the physical 

 state of the girls under their care. When they considered 

 that from 20 to 60 years of age women were engaged in 

 some way or another with the care of children it could be 

 realized how very important it was that the few short years 

 of adolescence should not be misused and the whole of that 

 efficiency minimized. They had found that a very rapid 

 physical growth, with increase in height and weight, 

 occurred at even an earlier period in boys and girls in 

 Australia than was the case, according to the figures, in 

 America. That was to say that this physiological high 

 pressure was taking place at a time when the organization 

 was less fit to stand it; and yet they were copying this 

 educational high pressure from other countries, and were 

 applying it even at this early age with, she feared, evil 

 results to the organism. It was, a difficulty on which the 

 best authorities differed very much, but if one looked at 

 the facts of physical growth one could not expect boys and 

 girls to work long at the same rate. As Thompson had 

 said, growing up was very hard work, and the whole 

 organism was concerned with its own self-consciousness, 

 and there must be plenty of room and plenty of time for 

 play. With the high pressure of education the girl went 

 home and was busy with her work, and saw nothing of her 

 brothers and sisters. She was divorced from home in- 

 terests, and therefore lost taste for a contented home life. 

 The education of a girl should develop the sympathy 

 between mother and daughter more than had been the case 

 in the past, yet the education of the High School girl of 

 the present day was creating a divorce between parent and 

 child instead of fostering unity and sympathy, and set the 

 worruin seeking for interests outside her home life. 



Dr. HEDGER, in reply, said that with regard to Dr. 

 Saleeby's remarks as to subsequent figures, she had been 

 unable to find any figures to controvert her statement. She 

 accepted Dr. Saleebv's statement as to nutrition in its broad 

 sense. It was only a common sense proposition in so 



