190 REPORT — 1860. 



solids and ordinary fluids, but also in the production of those imponderable and 

 interchangeable forces which have sometimes been personified as • nervous fluid,' 

 ' muscular force,' &c. Using the latter term to exemplify my meaning, the excess of 

 nervous force is in the child most naturally and healthily reduced by its conversion 

 into muscular force ; and at very short intervals, during the active or waking period 

 of life, the child instinctively uses its muscles, and relieves the brain and nerves of 

 their accumulated force, which passes, by the intermediate contraction of the mus- 

 cular fibre, into ordinary force or motion, exemplified by the child's own movements, 

 and by those of some object or other which has attracted its attention. 



" The tissues of the growing organs, braiu, muscles, &c, are at this period of 

 life too soft to bear a long continuance of their proper actions ; their fibres have 

 not attained their mature tone and firmness : this is more especially the case with 

 the brain-fibre. The direct action of the brain, as in the mental application to learn- 

 ing, soon tires ; if it be too long continued, the tissues are unhealthily affected ; the 

 due progress of growth, which should have resulted in a fibre fit for good and con- 

 tinuous labour at maturity, is interfered with ; the child, as an intellectual instrument, 

 is to that extent spoiled by an error in the process by which that instrument waa 

 sought to be improved. 



" The same effect on the muscular system is exemplified in the racers that are 

 now trained to run, at 2^ or 3 years' old, for the gi-and prizes at Doneaster or Epsom. 

 The winner of the ' Derby ' never becomes an ' Eclipse ' or ' Flying Childers,' because 

 the muscular system has been overwrought two or three years before it could have 

 arrived at its full development, which development is stopped by the premature 

 over-exertion. 



" If the brain be not stimulated to work, but is allowed to rest ; and if, at the 

 same time, the muscles be forbidden to act, there then arises, if this restraint bo 

 too prolonged, an overcharged state of the nervous system. It is such a state as 

 we see exemplified in the caged quadruped of active habits, when it seeks to relieve 

 it by converting the nervous into the muscular force to the extent permitted by its 

 prison, either executing a succession of bounds against the prison-bars, like the agile 

 leopard, or stalking, like the lion, sullenly to and fro. 



" If the active child be too long prevented from gratifying the instinctive impulse 

 to put in motion its limbs or body, the nervous system becomes overcharged, and 

 the relief may at last be got by violent emotions or acts, called 'passion' or 'naughti- 

 ness,' ending in the fit of crying and flood of tears. 



"But all these impediments to a healthy development of the nervous system 

 might be obviated by regulations, based on the system which you rightly advocate, 

 providing for more frequent alternations of labour and rest, of study and play, of 

 mental exertion and muscular exercise ; in other words, by briefer and more frequent 

 periods allotted to those phases of educational procedure, and modified to suit two 

 or three divisions of the scholars, according to age. 



" The powers and workings of the human frame concerned in the complex acts 

 and influences, which you have asked me to explain physiologically, are amongst 

 the most recondite and difficult in our science. You will therefore comprehend 

 and excuse my short-comings in trying to fulfil your wish. But, on the main point, 

 I have no doubt that your aim is in close accordance with the nature of the delicate, 

 and, for good or evil, easily impressible organization of the child. 



" Believe me, ever truly yours, 



" Richard Owen." 



It is difficult to separate distinctly the evils arising from the excess of simple 

 bodily inactivity, from the results of the common insanitary conditions of schools- 

 bad ventilation, bad lighting, bad warming, and overcrowding. These, however, 

 are attended by epidemic and eruptive diseases, which ravage the infantile com- 

 munity. Simple constraint appears to be attended by enervation and obstructed 

 functions, and thence maladies of another class. The preventive of these is the 

 occupation of children, with means of physical training, with systematized gym- 

 nastics, including swimming, and the naval and military drill. Where there have 

 been good approximations to the proper physiological as well as the psychological 

 conditions, as in the half-time industrial district schools, epidemic diseases have 

 been banished, and the rate of mortality reduced to one-third of that which prevails 



