396 



The Review of Reviews. 



A,n 



HEALTH FACTS FOR OUR SCHOOLS. 



Mr. T. C. Horsfall contributes a valuable paper 

 on health and education to the Contemporary Re- 

 view. He rightly insists that the attainment of com- 

 plete health by all persons should be the one object 

 of all educational systems. To this great end he 

 mentions certain elementary requisites. 



VALL'E OF MOTHEKS MILK. 



The food which Nature supplies is apparently the 



best food that the child can have. The writer 



says : — 



It U well known to all persons who study the condi- 

 tions needed tor the health of communities that children 

 who are suckled by their mothers have, as a rule, uol 

 only better health in infancy, but also stronger constitu- 

 tions all their lives than children who are not so led. 

 In Germany, where observations have been made carefully 

 and on a large scale, it is found that amongst artificially- 

 fed babies the rate of death in the first year varies at 

 different seasons from eleven to twenty-one times the rate 

 for breast-fed ciiildi-en. Norwegian statistics show clearly 

 that tire higli degree of immunity from disease possessed 

 by naturally-fed children in tlieir first year is kept for 

 life. In Norway, happily for that country, it is the almost 

 universal habit, it has become the fashion, for women 

 to suckle tlieir babies; and one of the results is that 

 notwithstanding the dampness and severity of the climate 

 and the poverty of a considerable part of the population, 

 the rate of infantile mortality, that is the rate of mor- 

 tality for children under one year of age. is only 100 per 

 1000, "as compared with 145 per 10i30 in Great Britain and 

 250 per 1000 in Germany. 



A curious fact in this connection is that the pro- 

 jwrtion of women who cannot suckle their babies is 

 in Germany about ten per cent. " German observers 

 have recently ascertained that when a woman com- 

 pletely loses the power, her daughters also lack it; 

 that the function is irrecoverably lost." The num- 

 ber of those who cannot suckle is continually being 

 augmented, chiefly by women one of whose parents 

 has been a drunkard. 



fEESH AIR. 



Fresh air is the great preventer of consumption, 

 Country holidays are a most valuable ingredient in 

 the nation's health. For example: — 



In Halle Dr. Schmid-Monnard. a very careful observer, 

 who had before him measurements made for several years 

 of all the children of the fown, examined a large number 

 of delicate children before and after they had spent three 

 weeks in a holiday colony. He found that most of thera 

 gained as much in weight and in chest capacity in the 

 three weeks of country life in the open air as in a whole 

 year in the town 



The exi>erience of the Continental institutions in which 

 many defective and slow-minded children are treated 

 shows that children who have become untruthful and dis- 

 honest under the influence of over-mental pressure, can 

 there also be restored to moral health by the influence of 

 well-chosen exercise, fresh air and interesting manual oc* 

 otipations. 



SHUT OUT THE BABIES! 



The registered experience of Germany is again 

 drawn on to show that delicate children kept from 

 school till eight gain more in weight and height than 

 the more robust boys who went to school a year 

 earlier. Going to school has been found to check 

 the growth of girls. Passing examinations so as to 

 have only one year's military service is found to make 

 men less robust than those who did not attempt the 

 examination. On the injury to the child by being 

 sent to school too soon the writer is verv emphatic : — 



It iia... I)een clearly ascert.aiiied that to teach very young 

 children to read is to deprive them of nearly all chanc« 

 of ever having their innate powers ot rightly using their 

 eyes, their ears, their hands and their brains fully de- 

 veloped; that to bring young cliildreu into crowded rooms 

 wlierg there is neither enough- fresh air nor enough light 

 for them, and to keep them sitting still for half-an-hour 

 together when they ought to be moving about and to keep 

 them almost silent when they ought to he constantly 

 shouting and singing, is to deprive them of all ch:ince of 

 full physical development. It is said by many i>ersons in 

 defence of our habit of sending babies to school tliat the 

 average school is more wiiolesome than th.e average town 

 home witli its sltim or semi-slum surroundings, and that 

 many children would have no one to look after them at 

 home. It is an unusually badly-ventilated home, and an 

 impossibly hadly-ventilaled court, that during the daytime 

 does not give a little child better air and more chances of 

 itiovenient than the ordinary school. 



THE MISCHIEF OF OVEETIRING BOYS. 



Mr. Horsfall says that at preparatory schools and 

 public schols boys are kept out of moral danger by 

 being encouraged to overtire themselves. Wlien they 

 sit down to their books overtired they acquire a dis- 

 taste and then a hatred for books. " Boys ought 

 to lie kept out of mischief by living at home and 

 feeling the combined influence of their parents and 

 moderate wisely chosen exercises.' Mr. Horsfall 

 characteristically ends by saying that he is old- 

 fashioned enough to be convinced that some clear 

 religious knowledge is necessary even for the main- 

 tenance of physical health. 



"DULL DOGS." 



Ill " From a College \\"indow' " in the Cornhill, 

 Mr. A. C. Benson (I believe it is) discusses dull 

 dogs and what makes them dull, the question having 

 arisen from a conversation bearing on the ethics of 

 talkin;; about one's host, and, therefore, about one's 

 friends and acquaintances generally. 



" The danger of dulness,' says the writer, " whe- 

 ther natural or acquired, is the danger of compla- 

 cently lingering among st'ipid and conventional 

 ideas, and losing all the bright interchange of the 

 larger world. The dull people are not, as a rule, the 

 simple people — they are generally provided with a 

 narrow and self-sufficient code; they are often en- 

 tirely self-satisfied, and apt to disapprove of every- 

 thing that is lively, romantic and vigorous." 



He might have added that usually they have no 

 sense of humour. The dull dogs who have evi- 

 dently overpowered Mr. C. A. Benson at times may, 

 he says, have much practical and even mental 

 ability : — 



I know several people of very great intellectual power 

 who are models of dulness. Their memories are loaded 

 with what is no doubt very valuable information, and 

 their conclusions are of the weightiest character; hut 

 tliey have no vivid perception, no alertness, they are not 

 open to new ideas, they never say an interesting or a 

 suggestive thing; their presence is a load on the spirits 

 of ;i lively partv. their very facial expression is a rebuke 

 to all light-mindedness and triviality. Sometimes these 

 people are silent, and then to be in. their presence is like 

 being in a thick mist; there is no outlook, no enlivening 

 prospect. Sometimes they are talkers: and I am not sure 

 that that is not even worse, because thev generally dis- 

 course on their own subjects with profound and serious 

 conviction. They have no power of conversation, because 

 they are not interested in anyone else's point of view; they 

 care no more who their companions are than a pump cares 

 what sort of a vessel is put under it — they only demand 

 that people should listen in =ilenie. 



