BOY PRODIGY'S COLLAPSE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 772, 22 March 1910, Page 3

BOY PRODIGY'S COLLAPSE.

Young Master Sidis, Harvard's boy prodigy, is very ill, and has not been at college since-he lectured before tho Harvard Mathematical Club. Dr. Sidis, tho boy's father, says it is only influenza, and combats the theory that excessive stimulation of .the brain from infancy has impaired his son's vitality. Nevertheless, Americans, who wero astounded by the youngster's mental precocity, as proved in his recent lecture on the Fourth Dimension; are saying: "I told you so.". Alphabetical blocks, calculating machines, and oven time-tables, it appears, wero the boy's "playthings" almost from birth, and the father's theory that it is never too early to begin a child's education .was abundantly, exploited. It was not enough for young Sidis to attend a Harvard course, but he also" occupied his learned leisure in writing a simplified Greek grammar. He has been in bed in a state bordering on nervous collapse, and consulting physicians have been called in. Several of the- leading education authorities in Now York declare that, in contrast to Dr. Sidis's theory of mental development, it is infinitely better to allow children's brains to Ho fallow until a relatively late age, when they soon make.up for, what is erroneously called "lost time."