PHYSIOLOGY : ITS PLACE IN EDUCATION. 
389 
processes of the body generally. Let them be taught that 
enough is known to enable men to preserve health, if care be 
taken not to impede nature by officious interference. Let 
this instruction be firmly implanted, and there will be built 
up a fortification against the attacks of quackery, far stronger 
and more durable than any which could be raised by 
prohibitory legislation. 
It is not merely as a preventive of charlatanic trifling 
with disease that a general knowledge of physiology is likely 
to be useful. The usages and fashions of our ordinary life 
are too often adopted without reference to natural laws; and 
consequently these laws are broken at least as often as they 
are observed. But the liability to this contradiction of 
nature would be greatly diminished, probably altogether 
removed in time, by a general knowledge of what is incom- 
patible with health and life. If, for instance, the necessity 
to respiration of allowing a free play of the thoracic 
apparatus were generally recognised, we should in a little 
time cease to hear of the mischiefs produced by tightly 
laced corsets ; if the absolute need of a constant supply 
of pure air for the performance of the same function were 
known, it would no longer be a matter of popular indif- 
ference whether the poisonous gases of the carefully closed 
and perhaps over-crowded room, or the pure atmosphere, 
were inspired ; if the doctrine of the alternation of repose 
and activity of organs were understood, less would be heard 
of over-strained muscle or over-worked brain. These ex- 
amples are merely suggestive, far from exhaustive. 
The instances we have given of the benefits which would 
arise from popular instruction in physiology are general. 
But there are many -special professions, other than the 
medical, in which this knowledge would find its useful 
application. 
The sanitary condition of the army has already been 
made the subject of special comment in this number of 
the Sanitary Review ; and therefore it is not necessary to 
say much on the subject in this place. But to what 
extent the rate of mortality evidently traceable to preventible 
causes might be reduced, were the soldier instructed in the 
rudiments of physiology, we leave to the judgment of the 
well informed reader. 
The clergy have the reputation of being amongst the most 
zealous and influential patrons of quackery. The influence 
which they possess arises in a great degree from the repu- 
tation of learning which is attached to them, as a result of 
their collegiate education. The people suppose their know- 
