482 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 33J 



SCIENCE: 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



PUBLISHED BY 



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NEW YORK, June 21, iS 



No. 333. 



CONTENTS: 



SBRS. 



471 



Electrical Power Transmission 

 AT Virginia City, Nev 472 



A Model School of Architecture 



Barr Ferree 476 



Nansen's Expedition across Green- 

 land 477 



Sixteenth Annual Report of the 

 Board of Health of New 

 Haven 478 



Notes and News 479 



Teaching Girls Music. — Pulmonary 

 Consumption. — Deaf-Mute In- 

 struction in Cincinnati. 



Danger lurking in Decomposing 

 Animal or Vegetable Food... 483 



Book-Reviews. 



Fundamental Problems 4S4 



Hygiene of the Nursery . 484 



Statics for Beginners 484 



Among the Publishers 484 



Cloud and Fog H. A . Hazen 487 



Osteological Notes D. D. Slade 488 



Professor Watzoldt, the director of the EHsabethschuIe (a 

 girls' school in Germany), has addressed a most serious warning to 

 parents and guardians on one of the evils of the present system of 

 teaching girls. It is on the subject of what Wagner has contempt- 

 uously called Hammei-muszk. The professor begins by pointing 

 out that the terms " musician " and " pianoforte-player " are not at 

 all convertible. Then he refers to the illogical conduct of so many 

 parents, who, for the sake of their children's health, ask them to be 

 excused certain subjects of the school course, while they encourage 

 them in the most excessive exertions at the pianoforte. Now, 

 there is no subject which, if taught seriously, makes such a de- 

 mand upon the store of nervous energy of the body as instrumental 

 music. The brain, the eye, and the hands are all exercised at 

 once : hence the frequent injury to health in the case of girls who 

 have not a strong constitution. The professor has collected some 

 statistics which show that more than half the pupils are taught the 

 pianoforte, and that after their tenth year they spend twice as much 

 time daily at it as at their other home lessons. Many girls com- 

 plain of feeling tired, absent-minded, fidgety, of headaches and 

 sleeplessness ; and these complaints grow worse as they grow older. 

 In all cases where the parents could be prevailed upon to diminish 

 the hours of pianoforte practice, or stop it altogether, a marked 

 improvement in general health was the invariable result. Herr 



Watzoldt, therefore, recommends (r) that pianoforte instruction, 

 should not begin until the age of twelve ; (2) that only girls of 

 sound health, and who show some talent for music, should be 

 made to play. We also agree with the final observations of the 

 professor, who must be a true lover of genuine music. " It is an in- 

 dubitable fact," he says, " that nine-tenths of the girls, after years 

 of arduous practice, only attain to a certain automatic technique- 

 which not only has no relationship with art, but is an actual hin- 

 derance to true musical perception. Teachers and medical men 

 should do all in their power to stop this pianoforte strumming, 

 which kills all true feeling for art, and renders a normal bodily de- 

 velopment impossible. We know how difficult it is to fight against 

 the fashions and vanities of the day; but, if it is only shouted from 

 the house-tops that true art and culture have nothing'^whatever to 

 do with mediocre Klavzerkatnmem, there will be some, at least, in 

 the maddening crowd that will pause and reflect ; and these, by a 

 lucky chance, sometirhes become leaders who set a better fashioa 

 to the unreflecting masses." 



Pulmonary consumption is more to be feared Jn every 

 community than any other disease that affects mankind. Cholera,, 

 yellow-fever, and small- pox — diseases that paralyze with fright 

 entire countries — are exceedingly limited in their results, in com- 

 parison with the slaughter of consumption. Last year Florida was- 

 panic-stricken from the havoc of yellow-fever ; but during the 

 same year consumption destroyed more than twice as many lives 

 in the little State of New Hampshire, and not a tremor ran through 

 the body corporate. The average annual death-rate in this- 

 country, from cholera, yellow-fever, small-pox, typhoid-fever, diph- 

 theria, and scarlet- fever, all combined, does not reach the enor- 

 mous total of deaths from consumption. It is time that some 

 determined and systematic effort be made to lessen this disease 

 which is now regarded by so many as preventable. Among the 

 general sources of infection there is one, at least, that should be 

 removed, or, if not wholly removed, greatly lessened by legal ac- 

 tion, and that is the sale of tuberculous food-products. Such foods,, 

 chiefly in the form of tuberculous meat and milk, particularly the 

 latter, are undoubtedly extensively sold to unsuspecting consumers ; 

 and that the results are not infrequently lamentable, no sanitarian 

 doubts. The general government has taken no measures to re- 

 strict this abuse, nor have the individual States. To illustrate : the 

 New Hampshire State Board of Health says that very recently 

 complaint was made to the Board of Cattle Commissioners that 

 some disease existed in a herd of thirty cows in a certain town of 

 the State ; and, under the assumption that the disease might b& 

 pleuro-pneumonia, the government, upon notification, sent a com- 

 petent veterinary surgeon to inspect the herd. The inspector im- 

 mediately diagnosed tuberculosis, had an infected cow killed, and 

 the post-mortem examination revealed tubercles in nearly every 

 organ of the body, including the udder. The inspector reported 

 that about seventy-five per cent of the herd was already infected^ 

 All, or nearly all, the cows were being milked, and the product 

 being sold daily to a milk-dealer for distribution among his cus- 

 tomers. The dairyman, ignorant of the character of the disease, 

 was bringing up a baby upon the milk of a single cow in which the 

 disease had advanced nearly to its fatal termination. Under the 

 laws of New Hampshire, neither the Board of Cattle Commissioners 

 nor the State Board of Health has any authority to deal with tuber- 

 culosis in cattle in a way necessary to restrict its spread among" 

 other herds, or to prevent the dangers to which it subjects the 

 human family. 



There are connected with the public-school system of Cin- 

 cinnati, classes for the instruction of deaf-mutes. Two of these 

 classes receive their education through the well-known methods of 

 signs or finger-movements ; while at the Sixth District School on 

 Elm Street, above Fifteenth Street, there is a separate school of 



