356 



SCIENCE. 



[N.S. Vol.. XV 111. Xo. 4.J.5. 



aboi;t at the outset that in planning the 

 work in physiology and hygiene in schools 

 the details of gross and minute anatomy 

 should have formed the major part of the 

 whole. Function was treated but spar- 

 ingly, because very little was known about 

 it; and considerations of health and dis- 

 ease occupied an insignificant place sim- 

 ply because definite statements could not 

 possibly be made about them. The instruc- 

 tion in school physiology and hygiene was 

 chiefly anatomical for the reason that the 

 dissecting room was the sole laboratory 

 of the medical school. It was the one 

 region of real and accurate knowledge of 

 the subject. 



We have said above that this condition 

 of hygienic knowledge has been entirely 

 transformed during the last twenty years. 

 The physician is far less mysterious in his 

 manner than formerly, because his fund 

 of Imowledge is vastly greater. He often 

 explains his reasons to his patient and 

 discusses the facts of his profession with 

 'the laity,' where he would not have done 

 so fifty years ago. It was within twenty 

 years that one of our leading pathologists 

 was heard to define malaria by remarking, 

 'When you don't know what it is, it is 

 malaria.' To-day he would not give that 

 definition, but would delight to describe 

 the wonderful story of those discoveries 

 which within a score of years have led to 

 our present satisfactory understanding of 

 the nature and mode of dissemination- of 

 this disease. 



The teaching of physiology and hygiene 

 in the public schools has lagged far behind 

 this march of medical and hygienic prog- 

 ress. It is inexcusably behind the times.- 

 We now have facts which any one can 

 teach and which .should be made known 

 as a preparation for the proper conduct 

 of life; and it is these facts which should 

 form the main part of the teaching. The 

 subject matter should be thoroughly re- 



vised, and in no more important particular 

 than in the restriction of anatomy to the 

 minimum amount needed to give a clear 

 conception to the general structure of the 

 body as a mechanism and of the normal 

 working of that mechanism. In a rural 

 school-house on the Maine coast we once 

 saw upon the blackboard, painfully writ- 

 ten down by a fisherman's child, a long 

 and learned list of the bones found in the 

 human bodj^ Even for a medical sti;dent 

 the list, as such, apart from the physiology 

 and surgery of the bones, would have, been 

 of small value; for the children of fisher- 

 men, the bones of the cod or haddock or of 

 the domestic animals would probably have 

 been of greater consequence. An arid oste- 

 ology is a poor introduction to the study of 

 modern hygiene, and one not calculated to 

 arouse a compelling interest in the subject. 

 Similar considerations hold with regard 

 to the teaching of physiology. The educa- 

 tional value of this science, it is true, is 

 much greater than is that of pure anatomy, 

 for, in the fii'st place, it is more interesting. 

 Not only in childhood, but throughout life, 

 we do not care greatly about the parts of 

 a machine unless we know or can guess 

 their use. From this point of view phys- 

 iology is a good teaching subject, and all 

 the more so because it deals with a machine 

 in which most of us are naturally inter- 

 ested. The study of the activities of the 

 human body has also the highest philo- 

 sophic value. It imparts that first and 

 most important lesson for the conduct of 

 life— a lesson which every person leaving 

 the upper grades of the public schools 

 should carry away with him — that the hu- 

 man body has a material basis and is a 

 mechanism, a machine. We must con- 

 stantly recall, in order to emphasize, Hux- 

 ley's saying that 'the distinctive feature 

 of modern as contrasted • Avith ancient 

 physiology' is 'the fundamental conception 

 of the living body as a physical mechan- 



