December 20, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



839 



culturist have been touched the least of all. 

 These rural pursuits are particularly diffi- 

 cult to reach, not because the people who 

 follow them are unwilling to learn, but be- 

 because most of the instruction has been 

 out of sympathy with them and unadapted 

 to them. The more difficult the problem, 

 the greater is the need of solving it. The 

 rural industries must be enlightened by in- 

 struction which shall be both educational 

 and useful. Nothing less can satisfj^ the 

 demands of humanity and patriotism. 



L. H. Bailey. 



ON SCHOOL HYGIENE* 

 Hygiene is applied physiologJ^ It is the 

 science and art of promoting and preserving 

 health , which we take to mean the greatest 

 energy of each part, compatible with the 

 greatest energy of the whole oi'ganism. 

 School hygiene as an art is concerned with 

 all measures that science and experience 

 have shown to be helpful and efficacious for 

 securing the normal growth and develop- 

 ment of pupils and the normal activity of 

 teachers, under the conditions incident to 

 school life. Nearly one-quarter of the total 

 population of the United States is at pres- 

 ent subject to the conditions of school life, 

 or, in other words, is engaged in the seden- 

 tary occupation of schooling. Of our school 

 population over 98% is found in elementary 

 schools, and over 18% is found in cities. 

 Urban conditions at their best are less 

 favorable than rural conditions for rearing 

 full-grown, vigorous, healthy children. 

 City-bred children of school age in America 

 — at least in the six great cities on the At- 

 lantic seaboard — are less favorably situated 

 than their contempoi-ai-ies in certain Euro- 

 pean cities, it would appear. 



Thus the death rate per 1,000 living at 



*Al)stract of report of Chairman of Committee on 

 School Hj'giene — read before child-stndy section of 

 National Education Association, at Denver meeting, 

 July, 1895. 



the age-period 5-15, which is the healthiest 

 decade of life among civilized men, is less 

 in London than in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, 

 New York, Washington and Baltimore, or 

 in Boston, whose death rate is higher than 

 in any of the cities named, while Berlin has 

 a lower death rate than any of these cities, 

 except Washington and Baltimore. The 

 mortality from diphtheiia among children 

 of school age — and from consumption 

 among female school teachers — is mark- 

 edly greater in Boston than in any other of 

 the American cities named above. No class 

 of wage earners in Boston, so far as the 

 mortality rates, analyzed by occupation, of 

 the U. S. Census Bureau go, has so high a 

 death rate from consumption as women 

 school teachers, excepting marble and stone 

 cutters. The fact that Boston is the only 

 one these six cities which habituallj' neglects 

 to wash her schoolhouse floors and corri- 

 dors from year to year and decade to decade 

 is not without significance. 



It cannot be denied that municipal sani- 

 tation and school hygiene are more highly 

 organized and successfully administered in 

 the leading cities of Europe than in the 

 leading cities of America. Indeed, school 

 hygiene had no place or standing among the 

 arts and sciences in America. There ap- 

 pears to be no department of public health 

 so miserably endowed, so incompletely or- 

 ganized, or so wellnigh universally ne- 

 glected by publicists, scientists and pub- 

 lishers as school hygiene. Without resort- 

 ing to foreign books, periodicals and official 

 reports, it is quite impossible for the stu- 

 dent to inform himself as to the nature and 

 results of the investigations and experi- 

 ments made during recent years for the im- 

 provement of the health of the school popu- 

 lation on the continent of Europe. 



The public scliools are organized, main- 

 tained and regulated by the State, which 

 clearly owes it to itself to take adequate 

 measures to prevent the school population 



