FOOTNOTES:
“The Electrical Resistance of the Human Body.” Gee and Brotherton, Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc., 1910.
SCIENCE IN THE HOUSEHOLD
By Mrs. W. N. SHAW
The slow development of the demand for the training of girls of the middle and upper classes in the details of household management has been to a great extent due to the common observation that persons of imperfect education are frequently proficient in the domestic arts, and to the assumption that good housekeeping consists entirely in the efficient exercise of those arts.
The fact that in the early Victorian period girls living much at home learned, almost insensibly, from their mothers the routine of daily duties in the house, has made elder women look askance on the lectures dealing with domestic economy which appear to them so needless, and has led them to foster the superstition that woman qua woman should be equal to any demand that may be made upon her as organiser of her own household.
That the housekeeping of to-day is more complex than that of half a century ago is incredible to the older woman who remembers the baking and brewing, and divers other matters, that demanded the attention of the notable housewives of the forties and fifties of the nineteenth century. 74 That the horizon of women’s lives has widened, and that other interests than those appertaining to their immediate circle claim their attention, is not acceptable to all; it is however the claims of these outside interests that have awakened in the more thoughtful the desire so to order their households that they may in some degree free themselves from petty cares, and be able to help in the amelioration of the lives of less fortunate persons; or to pursue other branches of knowledge in which they have learned to take a keen intellectual pleasure.
It is a paradox that one of the difficulties with which the modern mistress has to contend is the fact that her house is “replete with every modern convenience.” Every labour-saving contrivance, every mechanical convenience, calls for vigilance to ensure its proper use, and for knowledge as to the ways in which it may fail, and of the method of readjustment if it should happen to do so. No apparatus which is not thoroughly understood by the mistress will be well used by the servants, and servants will rarely if ever exercise any knowledge they possess to prevent the expense of calling in a workman. If the mistress of a house can use such ordinary tools as a hammer, a screwdriver, a gluepot, and a soldering-iron, a great deal of expense may be saved in small repairs; on the other hand, ignorant meddling with scientific apparatus may be worse than useless. There can be no doubt that a course of instruction in natural philosophy, combined with work in 75 a well-equipped laboratory and workshop, should find a place in the curriculum of every girls’ school, whether elementary or secondary, as this training lays the surest foundation for a superstructure of experimental domestic science. The argument against including the application of the physical sciences to domestic methods in the ordinary educational course of every girl, namely, that she may not be called upon to keep a house of her own, cannot be sustained; there are no circumstances in which knowledge of the laws which govern the health and well-being of human beings can be useless. We all live in houses, either our own or other people’s, and we are all liable to disease and discomfort caused by the faulty construction of the house or the unhealthy practices of the inmates.