436 THE TREATMENT OF DISEASES. 



Symptoms of over- work and premature old age are often seen in quite young 

 children. Children are set to study even before they have learnt to play. Before 

 the age of seven a child's work should be principally play, though play judiciously 

 guided and varied, as it is under the Kindergarten system, may be made to impart a 

 great deal of useful learning, without resort to a book or formal lesson. Too often 

 we find that children from the tenderest age are kept at school for six hours a day, 

 and have lessons to prepare at night in addition. Only the other day we saw in the 

 hospital a little girl, aged thirteen, who was suffering from St. Yitus's, which had 

 undoubtedly been brought on by over-work. She was attending a school where she 

 was taught "French, physiology, grammar, analysis, British history, writing, 

 spelling, arithmetic, freehand drawing, needlework, and maps," besides several other 

 subjects of which she had forgotten the names. She was a day scholar, and had lessons 

 in the morning from nine till twelve and again in the afternoon from two till half-past 

 four. Besides this she had work to do at home. She began again directly after tea, 

 and worked up to ten or eleven at night. She had been doing this for over a year, 

 and during that time had hardly had a day's holiday. If this is not cruelty, we 

 do not know what is. No doubt some of these poor little unfortunates grow up 

 precocious, and are thought by their proud and doting parents to be " clever." But 

 the results are no longer any matter of doubt. As a recent writer says " These 

 precocious, coached-up children are never well. Their mental excitement keeps up 

 a flush, which, like the excitement caused by strong drink in older children, looks 

 like health, but has no relation to it. Their tongues are furred ; their appetites are 

 capricious ; all kinds of strange foods are asked for, and the stomach never seems to 

 be in order." If an over- worked child continue to be over-worked, more alarming 

 physical symptoms quickly appear. " The frequent flush gives way to an unearthly 

 paleness j the eyes gleam with light at one time and at another are dull, depressed, 

 and sad, and are never laughing eyes. The brightness is that of thought on the 

 strain, and it often presents a dangerous phenomenon. The muscles are flabby ; the 

 sleep is restless, and disturbed with nightmare, or perhaps somnambulism." As the 

 victims of over-education grow up to boyhood or girlhood these physical evils are 

 complicated by others of a moral or intellectual character. " Clever " boys and girls, 

 but especially boys, continue to be over-worked, and in the period of approaching 

 and attaining puberty, over-work hurries thousands of unrecognised victims to the 

 grave. No farmer would think of over-working a growing horse, and yet parents 

 and teachers combine to drive lads and lasses between thirteen and eighteen into an 

 endless series of competitive examinations, the severity of which is every day 

 increasing. Sometimes a mistake is made in not recognising the natural quality or 

 bent of the pupil's mind, and still more frequently irremediable injury is done to his 

 spirit in sending him into a competition in which he stands not the ghost of a chance. 

 These intellectual gymnastics are a great mistake. Even the successful are deeply to 

 be pitied. " The prize system is bad fundamentally. In the matter of health, that 

 system stands at the bar guiltiest of the guilty. We have but to go to a prize distri- 

 bution to see in the worn and languid faces of the successful the effects of the system, 

 and there we do not see a tithe of the evil ; we have not seen the children before the 

 competition, nor do we see them after it, nor between, the competition and th 



