228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



times we should have endured the pangs of hunger, or subsisted 

 on the scanty fare allowed, even had it been properly cooked, 

 which it seldom was. Fortunately, nowadays, I believe, the cui- 

 sine in public schools is much improved, and more care is taken 

 that growing boys should have a sufficiency of those foods that 

 lay the foundations of a sound constitution in after life. A parent 

 would do well, before sending his progeny to school, to see that 

 the ventilation of the rooms, the sanitary arrangements of the 

 school, and the diet and the capabilities for gymnastics and out- 

 door exercise are adequate. These things are of as much, if not 

 of more, importance than the knowledge of Greek and dead lan- 

 guages, etc. There is every reason why, while the intellectual 

 faculties are being trained, proper care should be taken of the 

 material part ; in fact, a boy's mind can not be stored with in- 

 formation which may be useful to him in after life and the health 

 maintained at a standard to resist disease, if, at the same time, the 

 brain is not fed by proper food, and the constitutional stamina 

 kept up by exercise and fresh air. 



There are some diseases due to carelessness in early life that 

 leave traces that may handicap their possessor throughout exist- 

 ence, and possibly the worst of all is rheumatic fever. In this 

 case, mischief may be done to the heart that can never be reme- 

 died, and therefore it is necessary in the days of adolescence, 

 when the individual is careless of consequences, that a boy or a 

 girl should be properly clad, and more especially that the cover- 

 ing next the skin should be flannel. The tendency that rapid 

 changes of temperature have to induce this disease where an indi- 

 vidual inherits the gouty and rheumatic diathesis, should make 

 its prevention a matter of great importance, and much may be 

 done by forethought and care to obviate the risk. Another result 

 of school life that may bear bitter fruit in after life, that never 

 seems to have attracted the attention it should do, is that the 

 weak and the strong are allotted the same amount of intellectual 

 work. This should not be. " The wind should be tempered to 

 the shorn lamb," and the amount of intellectual work of each boy 

 should bear some proportion to his physical and mental power. 



Of course, it would be useless to expect the young to apply to 

 themselves rules that bear fruit when they get to middle and old 

 age. They are too young to have forethought and to understand 

 that, like a bottle of new port, they ought to carefully mature, 

 so as to improve as time goes on. It is a melancholy circum- 

 stance, as I have seen even recently, a lad, unfortunately left with 

 boundless wealth and a great name, beginning life at seventeen 

 years of age, and becoming a prematurely old man at twenty-four, 

 and there are few medical men of large experience who can not 

 recall numerous instances of men who have overdrawn their con- 



