Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/138

120 The question as to the importance of Slope or direction in writing was raised by Drs. Ellinger and Gross in 1877–8, with the result that Roman characters with vertical downstrokes were recommended in preference to sloping German letters. Dr. Martins of Ansbach district Medical Officer of health next brought the subject before the Central Franconia Medical Chamber in 1879. In the following year Dr. Paul Schubert addressing the same Medical Board made an attempt to show that perpendicular writing must supersede the present sloping style, and Dr. Cohn at the Naturalists’ Congress in Danzig simultaneously declared himself for “steep” writing, being quite in ignorance of Dr. Schubert’s action. Following immediately upon this come investigations by Drs. Mayer (Fürth), Daiber (Stuttgart), Weber (Darmstadt), and by the Paris Commission who in a body declared themselves in favour of Vertical Writing. Opinions were of course still divided, and in his prize essay on the Causes and Prevention of Blindness, Professor Füchs declared that the final decision was only to be arrived at from experiments, systematically conducted, in Vertical Writing in whole classes and beginning with the first school year. It was reserved for the Central Franconia Medical Board, which at its sittings never lost sight of Upright Penmanship, to attack and promote this question bringing it nearer to the final issue. In consequence of a motion passed in 1887 by this board, The Royal Bavarian Ministry of the Interior decided that experiments in Vertical Writing should be undertaken in Schools, on a larger scale. Hence in the Autumn of 1888 two first classes of the public School in Fürth and two similar ones in the training college in Schwabach began instruction in writing exclusively in the perpendicular style. These experiments were supplemented in the Autumn of 1889 by three first public School classes in Nuremberg as well as by the first class for preparation of the humanistic gymnasium. At the same time perpendicular writing was introduced into a series of Classes by Dr. Bayr in Vienna and in Flensburg under Principal Dr. Scharff.

From all these schools the experiences were most favourable to Vertical Writing. The declaration of its superiority in relation