Six lectures upon school hygiene : delivered under the auspices of the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association to teachers in the public schools.

  • Massachusetts emergency and hygiene association.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Six lectures upon school hygiene : delivered under the auspices of the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association to teachers in the public schools. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    comes over the left shoulder. Other causes are found in a bad position of the body, overheated rooms, im- perfect ventilation, wet feet, indigestion, peculiarities of diet, excessive length or severity of study without relaxation, and lack of out-door exercise, all which evils are, according to Dr. Loring, provocative of a certain laxity of tissue and want of resistance in the investing membranes, which finds its expression in the eye in a distension, which is in fact myopia. The remedy for this evil is suggested by a knowledge of the conditions which produce it. This knowledge alone should cause us to seriously consider whether, at the present day, there is not too much pressure of study, under unfavorable conditions, being forced upon school children, particularly between the ages of ten and fifteen, which is the great period of life for the develop- ment of short-sightedness, a period, too, when the body is developing most rapidly. That we as a nation shall ever be reduced to the myopic condition of the Ger- mans, I do not believe; and yet the statistics of the affection in America should give us abundant food for reflection, in order that we may cry a timely halt to its onward march. Omitting from lack of time a consideration of the subject of school desks and seats, and also that relat- ing to the spread of contagious diseases by the schools, the foregoing reference to over-pressure leads us naturally to the discussion of the last topic of this lecture, — a topic which has become one of vital impor- tance, involving, as it does, not only the well-being of the child, but also indirectly that of the nation. I refer to the intelligent care of the nervous system.