SCHOOL HYGIENE.

BY JAMES GREEN, PRINCIPAL OF HIGH SCHOOL, LONG BRANCH.

It is not my purpose to attempt to deal solely with the abstract principles of hygiene. If I can but add numerical emphasis to the energetic plans already put in motion, and furnish a little encouragement by the assurance that here is one more who purposes henceforth to fight in this line, I shall feel that I have accomplished all I could expect.

Hygiene is that branch of science which treats of the principles and laws for the preservation of health.

School hygiene involves as much of these laws and principles as are contingent upon the child's attending school. This branch of hygiene is not bounded by the school premises but extends to the domicile of the child in a certain sense it covers his school-day life. It therefore follows that, while school authorities can only be held entirely responsible for that over which they have absolute control, they are in part responsible for the child's home-life, responsible for so much of it as they may regulate by reaching out with their influence into the home-circle.

The laws of hygiene are not alone physiological, but they are also metaphysical in their nature. If we are materialists, we accept this statement at once. If we are realists, while we pause at the nature of the mysterious chord that unites mind and body, observation teaches us that their union is so complete that whatever depresses the one debilitates the other, and whatever exhilerates the one rejuvenates the other. It therefore appears that methods of teaching have as much to do with the health of the pupil as systems of ventilation, modes of carriage, diet, and physical exercise.

It behooves us, first, to glance at the evils to be guarded against or overcome in the school room; next, to consider the best means of accomplishing these ends.

It is difficult for the unskilled person to trace a large variety of ailments to a common place of either origin or development such as the school room, unless he is impressed with the idea that the body is, as a piece of machinery, one of the parts of which being out of order, the whole is deranged. So, upon any one school room evil, there may be a variety of consequents, through the child's peculiar weakness and special susceptibility.

The prominent evils of the school room may be divided into three classes, named from the diseases they promote, namely: 1. The pulmonary, including the stooped posture, impure air, drafts and sudden changes of temperature. 2. Intestinal, involving irregular meals, hasty eating and hurried stools. 3. Brain and nervous, including over-mental strain, monotonous, or cramped positions, want of sufficient physical exercise and improper light. Now, if we turn to the recent annual report of our Bureau of Vital Statistics, and to the Cyclopædia of the Practice of Medicine, we find the following: Total deaths from certain specified diseases in the State of New Jersey, for the year ending July 1st, 1881, 17,539. Of these, belonging to the pulmonary, are 5,197, or nearly one-third; to the intestinal, 3,943, or about one-quarter; to the brain and nervous, 3,144, or about one-fifth. Total amount belonging to these three classes, 12,284, out of the entire number, 17,539. Add to these figures the fact that, between the ages of six and twenty-one, near-sightedness is increased from 3.5 to 26.78 per cent. in this country, and far more in other countries; and still further add, that the schools have charge of the children at the period when they are most susceptible to these diseases, and we have evidence sufficiently startling to impress us that much must be done, and that right early.

I shall now pursue a course dangerously susceptible to criticism because characterized by specific applications of general principles; but in my judgment specific applications of general principles with criticism are preferable to the practice of some of our writers of using generalities so broad as to be susceptible of greater errors in their application than in their absence. I recently read in one of our leading magazines, three long articles urging the necessity of plenty of physical exercise and not cramming. Now, teachers may have many faults, but I never heard of their opposing physical exercise or favoring cramming. The question is, what is sufficient exercise, or what a proper apportionment of work? It is in answering this question that the mistakes are made.

I wish to prepare some material out of which to construct the main features of a model school room, and to mention in connection therewith some of the special qualifications of an appropriate teacher with a suitable curriculum, and then compare these with what some of us have. I propose that my model structure shall not be merely ideal, but practical, requiring rather increased intelligence than increased expenditure of money.

First, as to ventilation: Each person at each respiration displaces one cubic inch of oxygen by about the same amount of carbonic acid gas and vapor. To admit of this atmospheric change without detriment to health, each person must be supplied with forty cubic feet of air per minute. A room 20x30, with a ceiling twelve feet high, contains 7,200 cubic feet of air. Allowing twelve square feet of floor space per pupil, it will seat fifty pupils and grant each one hundred and forty-four cubic feet of air. Allowing each pupil to use forty cubic feet per minute, it will require 3.6 minutes to use the air of the room. To meet this demand 2,000 cubic feet of fresh air per minute must be admitted into the room. To do this without draft and consistent with maintaining a proper temperature the air should be first warmed and then filtered into the room through ten square feet of aperture, if possible divided into several different mouths, at or near the floor. An equal amount of equally guarded space should be allowed for the exit of impure air. The above figures are a medium between the maximum and minimum as laid down by the best authorities.

The light of the school room should receive careful attention. The following statistics are significant: 62 per cent. of those who graduate from the public schools of Germany are near-sighted; 26.5 per cent. of those who graduate from the public schools of America suffer a like affliction. Between the ages of six and twenty-one this near-sightedness is increased in Germany from 11 to 62 per cent., in America from 3.5 to 26.5 per cent., showing a greater ratio of increase in America than in Germany. Cohn found that of his pupils who studied out of school two hours, 17 per cent. were near-sighted; of those who studied four hours, 29 per cent.; of those who studied six hours, over 40 per cent. were thus afflicted. The eye is probably the most delicate instrument of the nervous system, and as such will most readily sympathize with any bodily deterioration. Of the various causes which aggravate nearsightedness, bad light is doubtless the most serious, and hence should receive most careful attention. The light should be admitted through

plain glass windows near the ceiling, on the left side, and equaling in their entire surface at least one-sixth of the floor

space.

Let us next turn our attention to a curriculum. I fear this subject has not hitherto occupied as important a place among our questions of hygiene as the strong sympathy between mind and body, above referred to, would seem to demand. The astonishing fact that everywhere increased study is accompanied by increased physical debility seems to admit of an explanation in one of two ways; either in the increased work or in the manner of doing that work. While I am willing to concede that the hurly-burly, on-rushing, fevered haste in fortune-seeking, quantity-versus-quality standard, as tendencies of this new American age in which we live, greatly constrains us to an overestimation of the amount of work that should be done, yet I incline to the view that we are to find much greater evils in the how than in the how much.

I believe that the courses of study now ordinarily laid down by the more experienced of our high school teachers, are necessary for conformity to the requirements of our most approved definitions of education. These include such a development of the useful faculties of the child as will enable him to go on developing and adapting himself to his environment, and such as are also necessary to meet the actual and just demands of the day. Let us glance at their contents: spelling, reading, writing, grammar, geography, arithmetic, United States history, a brief outline of general history, book-keeping, algebra, geometry, botany, natural philosophy and a foreign language. These units, subjected to a little variation or substitution, as the special case or local circumstances may require, constitute about the usual course.

Now, when we consider the requirements of the average citizen, including as they do a knowledge of such first principles of engineering, drainage, hygiene and civil government as are necessary, through which of the above studies would you draw the pen? But can they be accomplished consistently with the child's time, allowing for sufficient recreation and physical exercise? I believe they can. Here are fourteen branches, the fundamental principles of which are to be acquired, on an average, between the ages of five and sixteen; that is, in eleven years. For some of them more time is allowed, for others less, as the needs may be. Let us glance at arithmetic, acknowledged as one of the most important as well as one of the most difficult. To this branch is given, counting from the lowest primary exercises, a