730
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
under regular sanitary inspection by appointed officials. The principle of medical inspection is of precisely similar character as that recognized by the government in the emigrant service for the prevention and spread of disease on board of ships, and is found to work well. An investigation into many of the fatal outbreaks of diphtheria, etc., would show what active centers large schools are in propagating infectious diseases. And yet this source of danger could be so readily removed. The success attending the systematic inspection of troops, emigrants and others, in checking the outbreaks of infectious diseases, still more convenient would the work of supervision be in the case of schools. Instead of a changing mass of people of all ages, the inspectors would have to deal with the same persons for several years, and that at an age when the face soon indicates illness. To obtain good results the inspection ought not to be of the intermittent kind. By such means the extension of disease would be checked and much of the illness incidental to childhood and consequent suffering in adult life caused by conditions in the schoolroom be obliterated.
It is incumbent on us as women to see with all care that the growth of children during their years of puberty, which is of vital importance, is not disturbed, or disturbed by influences adverse to nature.
The education of the young people of a nation is to that nation a subject of vital importance. This fact has been clearly recognized at all periods of the human race. Into the hands of the children now at school we must in the near future place the destiny of this great nation. With them it rests to decide the question whether our national greatness, wealth, industry and well-being shall continue, shall not only continue, but increase. From all points of view, religious, social, moral, political or utilitarian, it is necessary that young America be properly educated; surely it behooves us carefully to consider how we may best impart the requisite knowledge with the least detriment to health.
We turn to the main question: is it, or is it not, the fact that in simply applying a uniform pressure to a vast number of boys and girls, some must be in the nature of things too weak or not sufficiently developed to bear the strain thrust upon them? It would seem to us a proper time for a declaration of rights in behalf of helpless children, and in behalf of future generations, whom we shall load with a burden more disastrous and heavy than the national debt, a burden of disintegration and disease. What a monstrous and inexplicable blunder, this insistance upon a level code of education for all! Even as regards a soldier or sailor, a medical examination precedes the commencement of the drill, and medical inspection from time to time keeps the question of health in view. Muscular weakness is not half so serious a bar to physical training as mental weakness is to intellectual exercise. Is it not strange then that, without any medical examination whatever, the brains are formed of multitudes of children, the majority of whom are under-fed? It is not enough to know the age of a recruit for the army or navy; means are taken to ascertain whether his heart, lungs and organs generally are healthy, and medical officers are specially appointed to examine them from time to time with a view to determine whether he is bearing the strain healthily; but no provision is made for testing or watching the immature cerebral organs upon which the public pedagogue is not only left free, but is required to operate. The brain, according to all we know of that organ, is the last to reach perfection of growth and maturity of any in the body, and therefore of all others the last that should be overworked in childhood, when its specific gravity and development are utterly incomplete and unfitted to bear overstraining. Whereas as the body ceases to grow after twenty-five years, the brain, we know absolutely, grows in bulk for fifteen years longer. And if the mind is any index of its perfection it certainly increases in strength and capacity for work for fifteen years after that. The functions of the brain may be stunted and crippled as those of the body often are. They may be cramped, dull or precocious, accordingly requiring intellectual work in proportion to their development.
The days of whipping children to death are gone. We are more refined now; we whip their brains instead, and if the brutality is not so repulsive, it is equally efficacious