Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/534

518 should and should not be used, eaten, worn, tasted, looked at, touched, etc., which are rehearsed by little children to their parents as coming from the primary teachers or the heads of primary departments, and then it will be perceived that the teaching of physiology and hygiene is not what we have a right to expect. What are the remedial measures?

1. Encourage the sale and use only of reliable text-books written by physicians or sanitarians who have had experience as teachers. The mere compiler will magnify the importance of what may be considered by comparison as the non-essentials, and will endeavor to perpetuate absurd and untruthful statements simply because they sound well.

2. Health boards, health societies, and sanitary associations have instructed by this time a goodly body of physicians in sanitary matters. These men and women may well be called upon to outline hygienic teaching, if not to be practical teachers themselves. In addition to instruction in normal and model schools by such special teachers, there should be a sanitary supervision of schools. The physicians appointed to do this work should look after the ventilation, lighting, and cleanliness of the school-buildings, the spread of contagious disease, the condition of wardrobes and closets, the vaccination of school-children, etc. In some cities the attempt is made to do this work through the health authorities, but it is unsatisfactory, as the physicians doing the work are, for the most part, political appointees, and not chosen for their knowledge of health matters. The work should be done by sanitary officers of boards of education. With proper teaching and proper sanitary supervision of the schools, hygienic subjects would be real to the pupil, and the value of hygienic knowledge would be so apparent that interest instead of apathy would be the rule. In 1873, at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, President White, of Cornell University, said: "First, as regards public schools, I would make provision for simple instruction in the elements of physiology and hygiene, either by the use of some short and plain text-book, or, what is still better, by lectures from some competent resident physician. I confess that I greatly prefer the latter method. Not only theory but experience leads me to prefer it. Were it not that we have made a great mistake in our systems of public instruction by severing our common-school instruction from advanced instruction, we should by this time have a body of teachers in our common schools abundantly able to lecture to the pupils without a text-book." It is now seventeen years since these words were uttered, and what do we find in regard to the teaching of physiology and hygiene? Just this, that the number of physicians who teach in the schools is very small, that the average teacher