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PHYSICAI* TRAINING. 263
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
« Miss Nightingale, Who Began Iier Caree...
is often acliing from suppressed activity . I have the warranty of Professor Owen for saying , that the resistances of children are for
the most part natural vindications of the laws of physiology ; and I am prepared to show elsewhere , on the evidence of some of the most
experienced and successful schoolteachers in the kingdom , that they are violations of the laws of psychology and injurious mentally .
The evil effects of the common bodily constraints during long hours in school are seriously manifested on girls , and especially on girls
of the higher and middle classes . In Manchester and some of our manufacturing townswith increasing prosperity , an increasing
proportion of the female , children of parents originally from the rural districts are sent to boarding schools as -well as day-schools ,
' using long hours of sedentary occupation to book instruction . Mr . Robertson , the surgeon , who has had special practice in cases of
disease affecting females , shows that , the _projoortion of mothers of that class who have been so trained and educated , who can suckle
their own children is decreasing , —which in itself is a source of much social eviland an injury to the wet nurse's own child , who
, is displaced for the offspring of the incapable mother . He proves statistically that the deaths from childbirth are more than eight
times more numerous amongst females so brought up than amongst females of a lower condition who have had less school restraint
and more freedom . Dr . Drummond , a physician of Glasgow , specially conversant with the diseases of females , declares to me that
all the evils observed by Mr . Robertson in Manchester , as arising from " the neglect of bodily training , " are still more grievously
prevalent amongst the females of this city . Females subjected to long hours of sedentary application , either
at home or at boarding school , are peculiarly liable to spinal distortionto hysteriaand to painful disorders , which prevail to
an extent , known onl , y to physicians—making life burdensome to themselves and wretched to their unhappy offspring , for it is
proverbial that " Ailing- mothers make moaning children . " These bodily weaknesses in the heads of families have a widely depressing
influence . Unsanitary conditions which enfeeble the body , and predispose it to disease , make the mind the body's slave : sound sanitary
measures tend to enfranchise the mind and make it the body's master . Parallel with this evidence as to the evil effects produced by the
violation of the laws of physiology by the prolonged restraint in school and to muscular inaction of young and growing children , I have
the evidence of wide experience of trained school teachers under the best systemsthat children between seven and ten years of age
, do not and cannot retain a bright voluntary attention—the only profitable quality of attention—on the average longer than two
hours in the morning and one hour after dinner . Further , I have extensive and complete evidenceas I conceivethat under
con-, , ditions where suitable bodily exercise is provided , where there is a
better compliance with the physiological law of development ex-
Physicai* Training. 263
PHYSICAI * TRAINING . 263
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1860, page 263, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121860/page/47/
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