Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1874-02-13

and encourage him to be even more like a
man.
This premature refining ruins everything.
IL stops growth, and stamps mediocrity,
sometimes even imbecility, on the mind. The
organic functions are disturbed; the girl is a
woman at thirteen and old at twenty. The
body is stunted as well as the brain. The
cheeks are pale and the muscles fabby. The
fire which burned so brightly at ten is
dimmod at fifteen, and only dead ashes are
left at twenty-five. These perhaps are cx-
treme cases, but their number is not few.
There is always tendency TO 20 Ia that d.
rection. IL is doubtful whether any boy or
girl can take the whole continuous course
from the primary through the high school,
and come out perfectly sound. The greater
number Of course make average men and
women, few becoming shining lights, while
many are utterly broken in mind and in
body, and all are more or less victims Of the
system.
1t is the duty Of the physician to see that
this mental crowding is corrected, and that
more attention is paid to hygiene and physi-
cal culture in the schools. Let the unani-
nous voice Of the profession demand tho re-
form, and it will be obeyed. Our school
boards are perhaps not composed Of angels,
but they are more ignorant than wicked
Their sins Of commission are not a few, but
those ofonission are far more numerous.
The city jurisdiction Of the municipal
board of health should extend not only over
hospitals AMI pest houses, sewers, back yards
and slop barrels, but also over the public
schools. The lecturer said he was lately in
recitation room with forty boys and girls;
half OF them looked sleepy and spiritess
When the class came in, the room was cold
and the windows tightly closed, the stove
was supplied with fresh Goals, and the reci-
tatiou commenced One girl could not re-
cite for a severe headache; another girl had
not felt well enough to prepare her lesson !;
half dozen were coughing; three .fourths
of them were afflicted more or less by colds
BY this time the stove was red hot. There
was no thermometer in tho room, but it there
had been, it would have shown an increase
Of at least thirty degrees in the temperature.
There was no water basin on the stove the
air in the room was very dry The scholars
complained OF the heat; the teacher had the
windows opened great food Of air, sixty
or seventy degrees colder than the atmos-
phere Of the room, came pouring in over the
heads and shoulders OF those next the win
dow; hnlf.dozen puny, pale-faced girls oc-
cupiod the back seat. In few moments
they were shivering, the windows were clos
ed, the stove relocated, aud the same process
repeated Thus it goes on from day to day
in hundreds Of rooms the winter long. Is
there no duty here for the physician? The
argument is so plain that it is not necessary
to pursue it further.
The physician has intimate relations to
education in preserving the growing brain of
the child from overwork, and his body from
underworld and neglect. We may hope that
the time is.comng when he will be called on
to fulfill these relations as he now presides
over public hospitals and quarantnes. The
sooner he shall exercise this oversight of the
public education, the better will it be for the
child and the after man,