Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/379

Rh it seems that text-books must do so, for nowhere else in the world can this kind of knowledge be obtained.

What is "scientific temperance"? What it is not we know from the above quotation from the ill-fated Indiana physiology. A strong statement of the reasons for abstinence from the use of stimulants and narcotics evidently does not suffice. Whatever of science or temperance may be in the Indiana series, it is clearly not "scientific temperance," else these years of agitation have been in vain.

To decide what "scientific temperance" is we must do as the children do. We must turn the leaves of our text-books till we find the answer; for "scientific temperance," like "Christian science" or "manly art," is not an expression which defines itself. To find a definition we must go to the source of information. Let us, then, select a series of physiologies approved by the leaders in the movement for "scientific temperance"—books in undisturbed use in States more fortunate than Indiana.

Our Bodies and How we Live is one of the best written books of the class in question. We learn from its preface that "the author and publishers are under deep obligations to Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, the Superintendent of the Department of Scientific Instruction of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, who has carefully revised the book." There is therefore no question that we have the right book for comparison with the Indiana series.

That which first impresses us is the strange new censorship which is imposed on scientific teaching. We find, to quote from the unpublished letter of a friend, that—

"A small group of people who have no scientific education or training in general, and not the slightest training in the specific science of physiology, one of the most complex and difficult of sciences, manages to become the dictators of both the matter and methods of teaching of this science in almost all the States of the Union. They do not profess to control this teaching for the sake of advancing the science of physiology or of the intellectual advancement of the student, but for the promulgation of a specific reform. This reform is no more naturally connected with physiology than it is with history. The effects of alcoholic drinks on the history of the country could be traced with more clearness and more reason than its effects on the bones. How is it that history has escaped?"

In this case physiology is used as the name under which attacks on the use of alcohol are brought into the schools. There is a science of physiology, a science which treats of the life action of cells and organs, but this science has scarcely found its way into our system of education. It has been obscured by the