TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 189 



of irritability, manifestations of excessive constraints against physiology ? If the 

 condition of muscular inactivity were completely enforced, what does physiology 

 tell us may be expected from these restraints ? I might ask you, indeed, 'whether 

 much of the insanitary conditions of our juvenile and very young populations are 

 not consequences following from them ? 



" First, there is the proverbial pale-facedness of the young scholar, and a lower 

 bodily condition of those who are subject to the confinement of schools, even of the 

 best construction and ventilation, than of those who are free from them and at 

 large, at liberty to follow natural instincts. 



" When the weakly fail in health in a marked degree under the restraints of the 

 school, the remedy is restoration to natural freedom, which commonly leads to 

 improved health. I cannot but attribute to the lowering of the system and bodily 

 debility produced by this excessive school constraint (even where there is good ven- 

 tilation), and the consequent exposure to epidemic conditions and other passing 

 causes of disease, a large share of our juvenile mortality, especially between seven 

 and ten years of age, when the opportunities of retrieving the effects of the school 

 Constraints by athletic exercises are less than at later periods. 



" But the constraints of a school are accomplished most fully in girls' schools, more 

 especially in boarding schools, where the sedentary application of young children 

 is extended to eight hours daily, and diseases are attendant upon them, which I 

 cannot help ascribing largely to violations of the laws of physiology. In Manchester, 

 with the increase of prosperity, an increased proportion of females have been sent 

 to boarding schools and high class schools with long hours; and I am assured 

 by Mr. Roberton, who is especially conversant with the diseases of females, that 

 the proportion of the mothers of the middle class who cannot suckle their own 

 children is increasing. He has shown me statistically that, with all the care be- 

 stowed upon females who have been so highly educated, the failures and deaths 

 in childbirth are full sevenfold greater than amongst females of a lower condition 

 in life, who have had less school restraint and sedentary application, and more 

 freedom and muscular development in childhood. Cases of spinal distortion, ner- 

 vous disorder, nervous mania, and hysteria, prevail peculiarly amongst the middle 

 and higher class of females, whose education has been of prolonged sedentary occu- 

 pation, even under the best sanitary conditions in other respects. As applied to 

 them, it is a proverbial observation that ' ailing mothers make moaning children.' 

 A lady who was eminent as a boarding-school teacher, but who has retired from 

 business, has observed painful evidence of the injury done by the prolonged hours 

 of sedentary application which custom and the demands of parents require, and 

 she confirms the experience of the best half-time schools, that better instruction 

 might be given in shorter hours. I have received a body of evidence from able 

 teachers, that they can and do exhaust the capacity of attention to book instruction 

 in half the time for which sustained attention to such instruction and bodily in- 

 activity is demanded by custom. 



" But what I seek is the sanction of your opinion, as to whether, if the laws of 

 physiology be duly consulted for providing a sound body for a sound mind, other 

 treatment is needed than that which prevails in schools, of requiring five or six 

 hours of sedentary occupation for children in the infantile stage, and seven or eight 

 for those in the juvenile stage? I appeal to you more particularly from the fact, 

 that in lectures and papers the teaching of physiology is insisted upon as an addi- 

 tional element of popular education, and an additional demand of time in those 

 schools, the whole condition and theory and attempted practice of which, though 

 not yet so recognized generally by professors of the science, appears to me to be a 

 large violation of it, and an offence against infantile nature. 



"Yours ever, &c." 



" My dear Ciiadwick, — I have perused and carefully considered every point in 

 the inquiry which you have addressed to me, and I concur completely with your 

 belief in the agreement with nature of the changes you recommend in the distribu- 

 tion and change of the periods devoted to school restraint and studies, and to bodily 

 exercise and relaxation. 



" All the nutritive functions and actions of growth proceed more vigorously and 

 rapidly in childhood and youth than in mature life, — not merely as regards the 



