Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/94

 80 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

is the duty of parents to take more careful oversight of their children. We do not doubt the sincerity of this opinion, and all the more because we often encounter in boarding schools even teachers and attendants who permit themselves to be led by unnatural instincts, and who thus contribute to the perversion of youth, and who prove unworthy of the confidence which the parents place in them.

The epoch of puberty is important in the life of boys as well as of girls, when the nervous system is predisposed to mental alien- ation. It is a stage of existence which ought, during a series of years, to command the close attention of parents and teachers. One should never lose out of sight the unhappy persons predis- posed to insanity. There is at this stage an inclination to err by extremes. Thus we should interdict long physical fatigue, unusual walks, exhausting games ; we should shun extremes of temperature, great heat or great cold, especially with girls, with whom excess of temperature may influence the menstrual flow, by diminishing, augmenting, or even suppressing it. The study hours will be strictly limited for those in peril. The sleep will be watched. Inadequate sleep is an insufficient restorer of body and mind, and insomnia is often a warning, a forerunner, of some psychical injury. This danger is greater for the girl than for the boy, who is often not affected at this transitional period ; he becomes more sensitive when he reaches full development, that is, at about the twenty-ninth year. The girl, on the contrary, is generally considered to be completely developed at seventeen or eighteen years. It follows that for young people of both sexes between seventeen and twenty-nine years of age the need of watch- fulness becomes more urgent, because about this age the phe- nomena are more frequently manifested. But it is at this epoch that young people attack the most difficult passage of life, that they really begin to live, that they find themselves facing the choice of a calling. It is also at this epoch that the affections are enkindled, and that most persons are married. How many young people at this age are prepared to contract marriage, which brings with it the idea of power to provide the material means of living? It is at this period that nervous persons