C. PUTNAM, M. D. 269 



gave any teachers a well balanced education in elementary prin- 

 ciples of hygiene, sanitation and biology. 



Very few teachers of biologic sciences carry in these "pro- 

 fessional schools" the conception of communal, family, and per- 

 sonal biologic science as a fundamental need for teachers of 

 children. A brief glimpse of collegiate work (devised for col- 

 legiate aims) is the usual course. Conversations with students 

 about to be graduated revealed a surprising blindness to the prac- 

 tical applications of biologic principles to the welfare of chil- 

 dren, and a surprising remoteness from the present great social 

 movements that intimately touch their profession in these lines. 



Almost more impressive education is given by the environ- 

 ment in normal schools, as is the case in children's schools. 

 There is time to speak of only those details in rooms and cor- 

 ridors more or less within the control of the teacher, viz., clean- 

 liness, temperature, humidity, dust, effluvia, fresh air, and 

 light. Whatever words are recited, the habits formed by actual 

 conditions more often prevail in later life. 



In no public school have I seen more unhealthful practices 

 than are to be found in some normal schools. Some details were 

 worse than it has been my fortune to see in children's schools, 

 and it is my impression that normal instructors have more 

 control over such than grade teachers usually have. One can 

 find large assembly rooms vacant all day in the same building 

 with small class rooms packed with humanity until no pas- 

 sage ways are left, temperature (winter) high in the eighties, 

 and atmosphere literally sickening. One can find janitors 

 sweeping halls and even rooms while school is in session, or 

 while scores of children (of the practice school) are doing re- 

 quired work out of regular hours ; vulgarly defaced walls and 

 toilets; splintered, dirty floors that could be easily made sani- 

 tary with a little linoleum ; the common cup and towel and 

 grimey wash bowl; these things in schools whose claims for 

 hygiene distinguish them above the average claims. 



On the other hand, one finds a few buildings as nearly im- 

 maculate as it seems possible for public buildings to be, with 

 air as good perhaps as it can be in any but outdoor or "fresh 

 air" schools (there was curiously little interest and no exper- 

 imenting in this kind of school). Such teach by practice as by 

 precept; not by precept in contradiction to practice. 



The inadequate professional standards in most of these 40 

 schools east of the Mississippi and north of Mason and Dixon's 

 Line is what we find reflected in public schools and thereafter 

 in homes. As the courts are increasingly holding municipal- 

 ities liable for injury to health or person through departments 

 having charge of sidewalks, streets, sewers, and, recently, water 



