Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/530

514 time. Five or more pages of this small book are devoted to bones, especially the location and number, but nothing is said as to what is necessary to keep bones in good condition.

The subject of alcohol is fully treated of, but intemperate eating, exercise, sleep, bathing, etc., are not even referred to. We doubt whether pupils who use this book could answer correctly if questions upon the various subjects were put to them in a different way from those they have been accustomed to.

A fourth book endeavors to teach the truths of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene in an allegory. The preface presumptuously compares the allegorical teaching of the book with the parables of Christ, and says: "If the great truths of Christianity could be taught in allegory, may not less difficult subjects in the same manner be made interesting and instructive." The preface further states that the authors have "shun abstruse and technical phraseology," have aimed "to give correct and scientific views in simple language with correct illustrations."

On looking over this book, we notice many poor pictures and the fact that a number of the pictures, though lettered, have nothing about them to indicate what the letters stand for. It is noticeable, also, that technical and abstruse terms are not infrequent, such, for example, as "perimysium," "quadrangular papillary clumps," "sebiparous glands," "germs of absorbent vesicles," etc. A third feature of this book are the attempts to be facetious. For the most part these attempts are ridiculous and out of place in a school text-book.

A fifth book, which has a large sale and is in the main excellent, has at times evidences of careless teaching; for example, "When milk produces an unpleasant effect upon the stomach, it should be mixed with a little lime-water." Italics are ours. In the list of antidotes for poison from fish-eating, appears the following: "Ether with a few drops of laudanum mixed with sugar and water may afterward be taken freely." Again italics are ours. In the use of mustard as an emetic not a word is said as to the importance of mixing it thoroughly with the water used, lest suspended in mass it may inflame or irritate the stomach.

We may judge somewhat of how a study is in general taught by the oral or written answers given by a number of pupils, in various schools, in reply to questions upon the study. About a year ago there appeared in the London "Architect" the following: "If instruction in sanitary matters is to be continued in schools it will be necessary to supplement the lessons with visits to some such place as the Parkes Museum of Hygiene, unless the school boards are satisfied if the children get hold of a lot of hard words, or rather of sounds resembling them. At present it is supposed that sanitary science may be taught as easily as morality.