THE TEACHER

Evening Star, Volume 12869, Issue 12869, 19 July 1906, Page 3

THE TEACHER

AS A CRKITTVE. AGENT. DR KraG'SMCTOBE. RrTruby King's lecture before tho Otago Educational Institute- on Friday night was delivered mostly in tlie dajk, because, of the exigencies of limelight demonstration. Therefore, in note-taking, out reporter had to make hazard ehots at has copy paper; hut, thanks to the lecturer's admirable method of imparting information and creating actual memory (this will be made more or less clear below), we are able to give I lie following sketch of the address. This article does not pretend to be a detailed record of all that, I}r King said in the course of. nearly three hours' speaking; it is nather an impression of the lecture condensed to fit available space. In the beginning, then, the doctor explained that* he had been asked by the secretary of the Institute to give an address upon some educational subject. He had already said a good deal upon the mafter of education, but felt that it was a great compliment to be asked to speak again before an assemblage of teachers, and so lie was really glad to have this opportunity. Among teachers there might occasionally have been a slight misunderstanding as to his point of view. Certainly the last thing thai would have occurred to him would have been to say anything uncomplimentary to members of a profession for which be had always ha<l the highest respect, and to which lrcuiy of has most intimate personal friends belonged. Nothing tliat he had to say was personal in regard to individuals, and most of his remarks were not particular in regard to New Zealand. Anything critical tluat he had uttered had applied largely to modern education the work! over. He explained that one expression for which lie had been specially taken to task was not really his own, bat a quotation from Canon Lyttelton. the head-master of Eton, wlio had said, in effect, when speaking to an assembly of schoolmasters, that the work of teaching under existing conditions had become largely a matter of imparting to pupfta the ha.ppy knack of deceiving examiners. It was quite ckar what Canon T/yttelton ipeaint —viy... that when teachers ground children for an examination on material got up superficially, and to be dropped irnmedtiately afterwards, he did not think that real knowledge was acquired, though iit might satisfy the examiners. No doubt Canon Lyttelton was strictly justified in what he said, and the speaker agreed with him. He had recently spoken a-nd written somewhat fully on edu. cation, educational reformers, and"the evils of over-pressure. Further, 'he had advocated play and games in connection with school life as a compulsory part of the euTricultmi, epsrntiui not only for the body but for the full development of mind a,nd spirit. His intention in this, lecture was to speak largely from a medical or physiological point of view. It was one of these matters in which the members of one profession might possibly bo of some assistance to the members of another profession. —{Applause.) The task of giving a name to his lecture, beforehand had been difficult, ihe term "creator" was not strictly correct, because creation was bevond the :)ower of man. As Grove said in "his classic Correlation of the Physical Forces': ' Causation is the will of God; creation is the act of God." What he meant bv vailing; the teacher a " creative a^ent" was to convey in a phrare the stupendous power and responsibility of the man engaged in building up for good or evil the bodv mmd, and spirit of his fellow-being"* If anyono could be called tho creator ofan individual it was the schoolmaster, because on him actually depended the structure to some extent of every organ of the body of his pupil, and especially the actual structure and pattern of the brain and nervous system, on which so much of the after life of the individual depended. Another thought arose secondarily, and that, was that one should not look upon education narrowly from the point of view of teacher or pupil alone, or of both combined. One must look at it also—particularly at compulsory State education—from a national point of view, and he intended to show secondarily, certain points bv which he might fairly illustrate to how great an extent the teacher might be a creator from the merelv marterial-standpoint— a creator not only of competent human boings, but of the prosperity, the development, and tho material resources and wealth of a country. All this by way of clearing the ground. tbe P lctures > a nd the light went out. The first slide was one representing fundamental experiments showing plant* supplied with different foods, the effects on growth being very remarkable. Here began tbe material explanations of psvehic phenomena. As Dr King said: "You*cannot properly grasp the fundamental problems affecting the life and health of man unless you start somewhere near the lieginning." The building up of the body of an animal was in many respects similaV to the building np of a plant, and one had to be just as careful in the one case as in the other in regard to supplying the proper materials and ensuring a suitable environment, except that the higher we rose in each kingdom, the more delicate, sensitive, and complex became the organisms, and the more earo we had to exercise to ensure perfect growth and development. There were certain laws that must be observed, and it was easier to see the operation of these laws <m plants than iu human beings, not only because plants were simpler, but because experiments could be made with more facility in the one case than in the other. One found that each genus had its special rewithout which it would not flourish. Nature determined these things, not man. Certain plants—clover, for mxtance—flourished, as shown in. the illustration, on potash and phosphates, if water ?nd a suitable mechanical basis of support were provided. The addition of nitrogen scarcely affected the growth. In the case of hemp, on the other hand, a nitrogen compound was essential, and until it was supplied almost no growth took place. We do not attempt to dictate the terms in a chemical experiment. Nature lays down the law and does the work; we merely assist-, and stand by to see that she has" fair jilay. So it is with all the complex pro(•osses that go on in plants and animals. These processes arc associated with complex chemical changes taking place in connection with living cells. The fundamental laws and requirements for each kind of being are pre-determined. Human being* are no exception, and we must either conform to the fundamental laws of Nature or go under. After that there were slides showing diagrams of the brain and nervous system and photomicrographs taken by" Drs Mann, Ford-Kobertson, and others. It was explained how ingoing impulses were conveyed through the sensory nerves to the cells of the brain and spinal cord, and outgoing impulses to the muscles, glands, etc. Then attention was centred on a. small spot of the highest region of the brain, perhaps the size of a pin's head in reality, but magnified to cover the screen. Here were the actual psychic cells—the cells upon which depend our thoughts, memories, feelings, and consciousness. They looked like leafless trees with tall, slim trunks and a tracery of delicate branches and infinitely slender twigs above. Here was the obvious physical basis for the association of ideas, impulses passing from one nerve cell to another through, the twigs. This was the highest central department. Here incoming messages were received, registered, deliberated over, and dealt with, and outgoing messages were despatched. It was Uke a central telephone bureau, the communications and switchings takinc place i>y contact from fibril to twig ana from • s.w»g-to twig of neighboring cells. Upon ■■be proper cultivation and orderly growth 31 .t*e ramifications of-the psychic cells depend the capacity and resourcefulness of the mind. There can be no reasonable doubt that the growth which would be promoted by moderate and normal stimulation would be marred by overstrain or pther inimical influences. These cells or trees had the lower part of the trunk of each plunged in a dilatation of a channel of dear running fluid, which it was explained transuded from the blood. Thus each nerve cell was bathed, not in actual blood, but in a kind of filtered blood stream.

The doctor tlieit jhoar

these cells became depressed or poisoned by any .harmful substances which found their way into the circulation. The quality of the blood stream determined the working power of the cells which it fed, and which wore actually bathed in it. That this was so was obvious when we considered the almost immediate effect of holding a handkerchief sprinkled with chloroform over the face.. In a moment the cell was bathed in a stream of poison. The effect of alcohol was slower but analogous. It was not so obvious that lack of exercise and constipation acted •in the same way, but it was so. Alcohol was produced outside the body by the action of minutes crgandams on sugar, and organisms acting on substances delayed in the alimentary canal were capable of producing analogous poisons, which were absorbed into the blood stream. But there was a more important source of poisoning than this when vital processes became inactive or impaired. Every living cell produced waste substances which had to be got rid of, and if the process of elimination was impeded, decreased vitality or actual poisoning resulted. In fermentation the veast plant produced alcohol, which stopped its growth if not removed, and so it was with the cells of our body. It was especially necessary that the body of a growing child should be kept in fuM activity and the best of health, because the rapid changes going on entail the production of poisons which not. only depress function, but, tend to arrest growth. As the French author of a recent book on the auto-intoxication of married women said, the healthy organism "est, une fahnqno do poisons "—*, veritable poison factory—the functioning of the organism being absolutely dependent on the integrity of the excretory glands, whose duty it is to eliminate noxious substances Otherwise both mother and child suffered. Now when there was poison in the. blood the brain cells, being the most delicate and responsive, were the first to suffer, and when they were affected the whole organism became secondarily involved to a greater or lesser extent, because they presided over and directed, as it were, the function aad nutrition of every organ and tissue tn the verv nails' arid finger-tips.

Hero the lot-hirer used n simile that is apt enough, thus: If the general in command of a field force is incapacitated or killed, and there is no other general to take his place, the direction of manoeuvres will fall on subordinate shoulders that may not be tit to bear the strain, and so the process may go on to ultimate chaos. So with the htmaT. being. The highest brain cells control the organism, and they alone can -fulfil their proper functions. When poison dulls them the man) becomes like the leaderless army., he becomes dominated from' lower centres, and various functions tend to either run riot, or; sink under a strain that they were never meant to bear. The brain itself is composed of what the physiologist calls noble and ignoble tissues. The noble rissiK • is the effective part, and the ignoble tissue is mostly packing. In a great many of the cases that go to Dr King's care at Seacliff there is an increase of the ignoble at the expense of the noble. A nervoblast, as its name indicates, is an embryo nerve cell. The primitive brain cells are nervoblasts, and Dr King showed pictures illustrative of sprouting—a process very much like the growth of a plant in appearance. A peculiarly interesting fact from the evolutionist's point of view was explained—viz., that every animal tends to reproduce in itself tho different stages through which its ancestors have evolved. This "is clearly seen in the nervoblast pictures. The nerve growth in a. man, for instance, is almost precisely on the) same lines as the nerve growth iu a rat up to a certain point; but the ma,n grows further and sprout* more branches than the rat. And the principle holds good right through. For sake of comparison, the lecturer "put in sequence upon the screen a photograph oi the highest brain cells of a frog, lizard, rat. and human being, showing the progressive growth of ramifications. After explaining the delicacy of these cells, and the need of carefully nourishing and keeping pure the blood that feed* them, Dr King said that nobody who understood these matters would allow people to be put in rooms like some of crnr schoolrooms, where there was no pretence of systematic ventilation. Y\\ had no right to compel or even to allow boys and girl:; to sit and do mental work in the cold for long hours, with defective furnishings, in places where it was absolutely improper for them to do any sort of work ox all. Tn mere commercial matters people were more careful than that. An intelligent publican had l)een known to ventilate his bar parlor, because he knew that his clients would get incapable quicker on carbonic acid and alcohol than on alcohol alone. _ Therefore he ventilated, so that they might hold out longer, and buy more champagne or whisky. Dr Kin!* said be found it very difficult to keep within b<muls on this subject. It seemed to him that hj? was: not expected to have any feeling. Tt was painful to be blessed! (or cursed) with the power to sec the stupidity of thee things,—cursed with the necessity to think, and yet to feel almost impotent to alter what could so easily be set right. The next picture was one illustrating the early stages of the defeneration of a brain cell, and it wag explained that pari passu with this process the vitalitv of the whole organism goes' down, so that in a few years the individual is wiped out. This," say? Dr King, is essentially a disease of overexertion—sreneral paralysis of the insanefound Tjsostlv in people that work too much and think too much and sometimes drirk too much. But these people are essent'al'y above the average of intelligence. Lord Randolph Churchill was a striking: pxamrde. Dr King emphasised the bewildering deli cacy and eomplexitv of the hrain cells, and said that the wonder was not that they broke down, but that, they stood the excessive strain that was so often Put nnon trt°m. Here came in the cruestion 0 f fatitnie, a matter about which the lecturer said he should not say much, seeing that it hid been dealt with the previous night by Dr Malcolm. However, he explained certain lantern pictures and photomicrographs in point. One represented a cell from the spinal cord of a cat before exertion, and another the same cell after exertion. The comparison was striking. After the exertion an entire change in the cell waq noticeable—it was very much shrunken, and its whole appearance was altered. Most striking of all were two pictures of a nerve cell from the ganglia of a honey bee. When the bee went out to work in the morning his cell had a largo full nucleus; when he came home at night the nucleus was shrunk and the cell altered. The next picture was rather dreadful; it was the negative (for fear of recognition Dr King did not show the positive) of a photograph of an insane girl of fourteen who had been sent to Seacliff. Insanity, Dr King says sltould scarcely develop before the age'ol twenty-one. Why did it occur in this case '! The inciting cause was teeth; teachers should look to teeth—they ought to be inspected. This girl had a double set of teeth, like a shark, and the extraction of one or two of these at the proper time would have saved her infinite pain and trouble from inflamed gums and inability to masticate her food. Digestion became impaired, and poisoning of the brain cells followed. More insanity came from the alimentary canal than from any other source. As for treatment in such cases, give the patients plenty of open air, and get them tired, so that sleep might oceur. That was better than all the drugs in the world. When poison was generated in the system, ifc was clear that the fluid that bathes every nerve cell must poison the very sources of thought and action. All that was best in suffered first because the cells that were most, highly specialised had the least nutritive and resistive faculty. Thus the highest brain cells go under to alcohol or chloroform long before the other cells become paralysed. The central nervous system, says Dr King, is like a hierarchy. When the more exalted cells are paralysed the lower ones tend to run riot and have a good time. Under the influence of whisky a man becomes a "jolly good fellow" ; he discloses his friend's secrets, and he tells you stories he would not have thought of telling under other circumstances, and he buys things he does not want at auction sales. His highest cells are poisoned first; tab.e best in him is paralysed. This sort of thing certainly gives a friendlier and more sociable feeling, and that, in Dr King's view, is t,he test side of alcohol. But control is tho b4ahest ianefciow of tha brain*, and. sant of

control is the leading feature of insanity. Control is most needed by the boy from twelve to. eighteen, and to havo that control ho must be kept in good form with a cold bath in tho morning to stimulate- him, plenty of open-air oxcrcise, good food, good air, and very little evening work. — (Tho teachers, applauded this last,remark with collective spontanicty.) In one college in New Zealand, whoro, Dr King said, probably more exercise is given than in any other school in the colony, it was decided to make daily outdoor exercises and games compulsory for all pupils, and to keep records. Everyone went to bed at nine o'clock. Tho proved result was that tho boys had increased in average height one inch, in average weight nearly Jib, though they took more exorcise and less "promiscuous tuck." Finally, they had added an inch to their average chest capacity, and considering that tho mean chest expansion was about 3iin, this was very satisfactory for tln> race. Or King hero came to one of the moat interesting parts of his lecture—viz., the explanation of the.fact that, manual training of an individual (particularly a voung individual) actually affects the" structural formation of the cells of his spinal cord. Tho crux of tho whole thing is memory. Memory means to tho physiologist something more than the power to consciously recall something. Professor Ribot says': " La memoire est, par essence, un fait biologique, par accident, un fait psyehologique." Though the power of coiiscious recall is the highest expression of memory, it is not the essential feature. The basis of all memory is an actual physical or dynamic change registered in nerve cells. There was basic memory long bofore the dawn of consciousness—the memory, the "organised residuum," left in cells "which enables them to perform functions better with each successive repetition. The true type of organic memory must be sought, as Ribot says, in secondary automatic actions, as opposed to primary'or innate, automatic acts.' These secondary automatic actions, or acquired movements, are tho very groundwork of our daily life. Tn the most universal form they are seen in walking, balancing, etc., and in more complex forms in groups of movements, such ;is are aeqmred in tho learning of all manual trades and games of skill. This is the physiological basis and raison d'etre of technical education. If boyhood is.a good time for educating and developing the psychic cells ■and the mind, it is certainly the" best time for training and developing the lower brain cells and the cells of the spinal 'cord. One could scarcely imagine any greater folly than, the common practice of devoting all attention to tho master, and leaving his servants to shift for themselves.

By going through a little stage business with an assistant the lecturer made plain the state of a man who is an inmate of Seacliff. As the result of a. severe fright coming at the end of a period of heavy drinking, the cells of this man's brain lost the powur of registering any new memories that would last for more than ten minutes, although he retains his old memory of things that happened and were registered before the chance in his brain took place. Though ho has been in close association with Dr King for eighteen years, this man never knows°him and never learns anything, because he has no proper physicar basis for niemorv. But he has reason, and u-ies it. If he is asked the hour of day or the time of year he looks about him and rcaso is it, out, before he answers. In the latter ca-e he would probably look out of the window and sav: "Well, friend, I think it'll be spring." Ask him why he thinks so, and he will say: * Well, I see the bulbs in flower." or something of that sort. Now comes the part of the story that sounds like_ miracle-working when you hear it first. Driving has taught a new memory to this man's spinal cord. He started by handing the blighted man a pair of Indian clubs. ,; Do you know what those are?" "No. friend, i don't.''— '"Never seen them before?" "No."'—"But surely you know what they are?" "Well, they're pieces of wood, friend." And so it wont on. How could such a man, who had no power of recollecting, bo taught anything? The doctor concluded that it was the highest brain cells alone that had seriously suffered, and that the more primitive and resistive lower brain and spinal cord cells might lx; more or less sound. Then he. began to have his patient instructed iu the art of .club-swinging. The patient tried to follow tho movements of his instructor, but at first was as clumsy and awkward as any'middle-aged man would be on trying to perform entirely new motions. However, day by day and week by week he improved, though he never acquired any knowledge of what, the clubs were or what they were for. Without his instructor to give the spinal cord the cue he was as powerless to conceive what the clubs were for or to use them as when they were first brought under his notice. Yet at the end of a month this man, when started by the .example oefore him, could swing his clubs quite well—the servant was trained, but not the master. This meant that an actual change had been wrought in the cells of the lower brain and spinal cord, though the Jian never realised llimFclf anything regarding his new accomplishment."