Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XII Modern Education And Health If one were to take note of the physical condition of children entering school, and again of the same children graduating from the high school, it would be found that many had suffered physical deterioration by this educating process. The brain has been improved and developed and the body allowed to care for itself. If the school work lags behind, if the brain works badly, there are the teacher, the principal, and the superintendent to be consulted about it—yes, even the parent receives notification that the child's work is not up to the standard. If the bodily strength is not up to par, who cares? If the cheeks of the little one fade day by day, and the shoulders become more stooped and the chest more hollowed, who is notified? Again, the child may keep the school work up to the standard, perhaps be the star pupil, and yet be poorly nourished, pale, sickly and undersized. No one regulates the amount of work to be done; the brain is stuffed while the remaining organs of the body are starving.Spurred on by teacher and parent, who see no limit to human endurance, the infant prodigy is developed and finally goes the way of all infant prodigies. Every physician knows that his family practice annually brings cases worn down by school work. The major share of the cases is found among the girls, who usually are more serious students than the boys, and do not enjoy the invigorating exercises of the latter. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, than whom there is none better qualified to speak on this subject, says: "I believe that, as concerns the future of our women, they would do far better if they were more lightly taxed, and the school hours but three or four a day until they reached the age of seventeen. A1.ything, indeed, would be better than the...