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Evening Star, Issue 6951, 10 July 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

material is damaged by want of foresight and consideration.

Fresh air is of all things the one most absolutely necessary to health. - Man is emphatically an.air-breathing animal, and under all circumstances flourishes best when he lives most in the open air and sunlight. Its importance for the young cannot be over-stated. Children will often grow up strong and healthy on therudest fare, with the scantiest clothing, and -with the most insufficient shelter; bat the one fatal tiling which they cannot withstand is a polluted atmosphere. They die by thousands in the alleys of large cities, or grow up stunted and deformed. Over-crowded houses, factories, and workshops are the nurseries of disease and death, moral no less than physical. An overcrowded school of all things is a mockery and a snare, and should be the mark of derision and contempt of all men. What matters it if you cram children with the Kule of Three, and every date since the Conquest, if at the same 1 time with every breath of air taken in by them they are laying up seeds of disease and physical deterioration. No pollution to which the air is liable is more subtle or more certain in its evil effectß than that produced by already-breathed air. How many thousands it has slain, how many thousands it is slaying, cannot be estimated. Its effects are seen at a minimum in a country like this, scantily populated and swept by every wind. tUat blows, but evert Uerc it ia a. great and a crying evil that many of our schools are so pvercrowded that they do almost as much evil in this way as they do good in others. THE EFFECTS OF IMPURE AIR. • It may be useful to recapitulate some of the best known facta concerning the evil effects of impure air. Rather more than 21 per cent, of the total deaths in New Zealand in 1884 occurred from lung disease and tubercular diseases. It is not saying too much to put down the largest proportion of tlie*c deaths to overcrowding and-impure air, working in various ways. It is well known that consumption, tho most fatal of- all diseases to the Anglo-Saxon race, finds its chief ally, if not its chief exciting causo, in overcrowding. The Maoris crowding together in their wharcs are suffering from it as from a pestilencs. The negroes of the West Indie?, crowded together in huts, die in large numbers from consumption in a climate where it is almost unknown, unlo3s imported, among the whites, who live in largo airy houses. Soldiers and prisoners in England have been found to die of consumption in numbers almost in exact proportion to the sizes of tfieir barrapkroonf and prison ceils. Horses and cattle, if overcrowded, dio of the same disease. Sheep, which are never penned up indoors, never suffer from consumption. It cannot be doubted that the seeds of this disease often are planti d in our schools, sometimes to kill at once by disease of the brain or intestines or lungs—for consumption or tuberculosis is not confined in its manifestation to the lungs alone—or to appear later in life with more or less deadly effect. It is needless now to go over the whole story of the investigations of such men as Parkes and Angus Smith on this subject; but the result of their labors has been that we know to-day pretty well what amount of space is needed in our homes and other buildings. We know that an adult needs about 1,000 cubic feet of space to enable him to live in a confined space with safety and comfort, and that for children at least a third of that space should be allowed. Even with that amount rooms should be emptied frequently and windows opened wide to secure a thorough renewal of air. 'Whatever steps are necessary to obtain such a reform ehould be taken, whether it consists of building larger buildings or more of them, or of racing the age at which children go to school. The future of the world is for the race that is strongest and best able to hold its own ; and even the education must be held to have a secondary place to the health of children.

: PHYSICAL EXERCISE 3 Stand in much the same relation to the body that school education does to the mind. As the object of tho one should be, as a writer in the London 'Lancet' puts it, "to train the mind rather than to fill it," so the use of physical exercises is to train the body to endurance and to facility in movement, rather than to direct its activities into any special channels. Give tho mind a good training, and it will acquire easily sufch special knowledge a* it needs, when the time comes. Do the same tiling to the body and ctrry on the two processes together, and you will do the beat you can to fit your youth for the coming struggle of life. The one is as absolutely necessary as the other. Gymnastic exercises so arranged as to bring into play every muscle of the body, are among the useful forms of physical education. ,Out-door exercises, footba'l, cricket, swimming, riding, walking, etc., should be pursued systematically a? times and seasons permit. Here, however, the limitations must be remembered that were referred to when speaking of individual peculiarities. The boy of weak frame will only do himself harm by attempting to do the same things as boys stronger than himself. The over eager need restrainiiif.'; the sluggish need encouraging. Properly regulated, nothingwillsoaidthe work in school as the play out of school. It has been said that there is a tendency in these days to place too high a value upon mere excellence in physical excreieoa. Famous cricketers or oarsmen are heroes for a time. Their doings are telegraphed all over the 'world, and what was merely a means of cultivating the bodily powers become an end to be attained for its own sake. No great harm, I think, is done. The excellence admired is a real excellence, and it is a good thin.'"that so many people can appreciate it. ' It will be an evil day for the Englishspeaking races when they cease to take an interest in honest, manly sports, and will be a bad thing for our youth and for our nation when lads begin to think it folly to play cricket or risk their limbs at football. It must be added that thero is not the slightest sign of anything of the kind in the meantime.

The individual peculiarities of the child are also much modified by work and training,mental and physical. In ppeaking of heredity, I pointed out how strongly marked was the tendency of physical and mental,states to be transmitted to descendants. Docto'S recognise this every day in dialing with cases of bodily disease." The child of consumptive or of gouty parents, for instance, needs to have special care taken that all the circumstances which-are known to excite these conditions are avoided. The effects of training are nowhere so marked as among those who are physically most imperfect. - The results of careful super-, vision of idiots at Earlswood Asylum, in England, and at other similar establishments have been very striking. It has been found that even among the most imperfect it has been possible to inculcate habits of decency and order. Some, apparently hopelessly imbecile, havo been found to have faculties in particular direction?, such as music, drawing, and mechanical work. The efficacy of training In the case of the blind and deaf and dumb are equally remarkable. It is found often that in exchange for the gifts denied to these unfortunates there has been a special exaltation of other senses. The sense of touch almost takes the place of that of sight in many of the blind. The sense of sight is notably keen in the deaf. The deaf and dumb have been found in most cases not to bo really dumb, but to be capable of learning to speak fairly well by using the rense of sight and other senses to watch the processes of the formation of words. The main principles in all these cases of training have been to strengthen the weak part* if possible, and to bring into play accessory' powers. These are the principles which should be observed in all cases cf physical and mental weakness, especially, but in other cases as well. "While recognising the importance of training, it is well not to overlook thedangpr of carrying out one system in all cases indiscriminately. That school-work is often injuriom to the individual cannot be doubted. THE OVER-PKESSURE CRY. We have heard a great deal about overpressure of late years and its effects on the bodies of children. A recent American writer thus speaks of the effects of too early schooling in his country: —" So long as children are sent to the public school at four or six years of ago there will continue to grow up a precocious race with active brains and feeble bodies. This injurious result is largely brought about by the direct interference of premature brain development with the complex intestinal processes of digestion and absorption." The sitme author, speaking of the physical effects of overwork at a later period, says, il An inaptitude for exertion, especially for mental labor, forces the- boy to give up school and college life. Successful careers are abandoned by men who, at the cost of neglecting all the rules of, health, have succeeded for a brief period in passing their fellows iu the race." The mind and body act and re-act on each other. When we remember that all the body is governed from the brain ; that the lungs, the heart, the intestines, and every other part of the body receive their primary impulse of life and movement from nerve centres in the brain; and that the brain, in its turn, depends for its due nourishment and activity on the food and the quality of the blood supplied by the rest of the body-it is not difficult to see the reason why mental overwork acts injuriously on the body, and how an im-perfectly-acting heart or stomach acts as a dragon the intellectual faculties. A moderate amount of brain wcrk is as necessary to health as is bodily work, but it must be carried out under proper conditions. THE SCHOOL AGE is, in many cases at least, too early iu this country. It ia useful for young children tobe brought into contact with their contemporaries, but if the conditions under which this is done are bad, nothing but harm remit.'. It is not good for children to be restrained at so early an age in school-rooms, or to have their growing minds loaded with tasks which are a burden to them. What they can learn easily is then all

they should attempt to learn, and education can go on in many ways exclusive of the alphabet and 'reading-book.

CONCLUSION. In conclusion, I may sum up what are the chief influences we have seen and at work upon the individual. His parentage gives him form and faculties ; the variation of type, which is one of the best-marked laws of life, prevents a sla">sh repetition of ancestral qualities; the local circumstances of climate, social habits and uaining determine tho special direction that his faculties will take. . , It only remains for me, after emphasising the material'mture of man, after trying to show the intimata relationship between the physical structure of the body and the manifestations of energy which come from the due performance of the vital processes to say that when this has been said all has not been said. The recognition of minor causes and effects, of the various forces and the pirts they play in the human 6ody, must not blind us to the fact that behind all this there ib the mystery of life which no man has yet fathomed, and which I, at least, will, humbly and reverently I hope, leave untouched.