[48] It would seem that the great majority of "educated mothers" do not realize the necessity of supplying pure air to the new-born child. Before birth, the blood of the fetus is purified in the maternal lungs; after birth, in the lungs of the child, if at all; and for this purpose pure air is necessary.
[49] The statements under this head are drawn from Dr. Howe's Report on Idiocy, made in February last, and communicated by the governor to the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The author visited the Institution in South Boston during the past summer, and derived much information on the subject from personal observation and inquiry.
[50] The subject of hereditary transmission of diseased tendency is of vast importance, but it is a difficult one to treat, because a squeamish delicacy makes people avoid it; but if ever the race is to be relieved of a tithe of the bodily ills which flesh is now heir to, it must be by a clear understanding of, and a willing obedience to, the law which makes the parents the blessing or the curse of the children; the givers of strength, and vigor, and beauty, or the dispensers of debility, and disease, and deformity. It is by the lever of enlightened parental love, more than by any other power, that mankind is to be raised to the highest attainable point of bodily perfection.—Dr. S. G. Howe.
[51] One would hardly be credited if he should put down half the instances of gross ignorance manifested by parents in this enlightened community [the State of Massachusetts] in the treatment of idiotic children. Sometimes they find that the children seem to comprehend what they hear, but soon forget it; hence they conclude that the brain is soft, and can not retain impressions, and then they cover the head with cold poultices of oak-bark in order to tan or harden the fibers. Others, finding that it is exceedingly difficult to make any impression upon the mind, conclude that the brain is too hard, and they torture the poor child with hot and softening poultices of bread and milk; or they plaster tar over the whole skull, and keep it on for a long time. These are innocent applications compared with some, which doubtless render weak-minded children perfectly idiotic.—Dr. S. G. Howe.
What a striking illustration have we here of the necessity of diffusing correct physiological information more widely among the masses than has yet been done even in enlightened Massachusetts!
[52] In the education of many, very many, I fear, the same mistake is made as in the case of Lord Dudley, thus described in a late number of the London Quarterly Review: "The irritable susceptibility of the brain was stimulated at the expense of bodily power and health. His foolish tutors took a pride in his precocious progress, which they ought to have kept back. They watered the forced plant with the blood of life; they encouraged the violation of Nature's laws, which are not to be broken in vain; they infringed the condition of conjoint moral and physical existence; they imprisoned him in a vicious circle, where the overworked brain injured the stomach, which reacted to the injury of the brain. They watched the slightest deviation from the rules of logic, and neglected those of dietetics, to which the former are a farce. They thought of no exercises but Latin; they gave him a Gradus instead of a cricket-bat, until his mind became too keen for its mortal coil, and the foundation was laid for ill health, derangement of stomach, moral pusillanimity, irresolution, lowness of spirits, and all the Protean miseries of nervous disorders, by which his after life was haunted, and which are sadly depicted in almost every letter before us."
[53] See Chapter IV., especially from the 89th page to the 105th.
[54] I may here add, that exactly the reverse is true in the melting of snow and ice. It requires as much heat to convert these solids into fluids, without at all increasing their temperature, as it does to raise the temperature of water from the freezing point, one hundred and forty degrees, or from thirty-two to one hundred and seventy-two degrees, as indicated by the thermometer. This principle is of vast importance to the world, and particularly to the inhabitants of cold countries, where the ground is covered with snow and ice a part or the whole of the year. The transition from the cold of winter to the heat of summer, in some of the northern climates, takes place within a few days. In these climates, also, there are vast accumulations of snow and ice, which, but for this principle, would be converted into water as soon as the temperature of the atmosphere becomes above thirty-two degrees, which would produce a flood sufficient to inundate and destroy the whole country. But the uniform action of this law renders the melting of snow gradual, and no such accident ensues.
A similar law is observed in the conversion of water into vapor, which is of great use in enabling us to cool apartments by sprinkling floors or hanging up moistened cloths. The heat of even a whole city is in like manner greatly moderated by frequently sprinkling the streets. It is on this account that gentle showers in hot weather are so cooling and refreshing.
[55] In the annual report of the Trustees of the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind for the year 1834, this beautiful passage occurs: "The expression of one of the pupils, 'that she had never known, before she began to learn, that it was a happiness to be alive,' may be applied to many."