Pedagogical Anthropology

by Maria Montessori

The grooved thorax is the one described above as common among the mentally deficient.

A considerable importance attaches to a form of thorax distinguished by the shortness of the clavicles, in consequence of which the chest remains flat, paralytic or flat thorax (habitus phthisicus). The flattened appearance is due to the fact that the chest cannot rise in front, and the shoulders, being cramped by the shortness of the clavicles, curve forward, while the scapulæ stand out from the plane of the back and spread themselves like wings (scapulæ alatæ). I have met with this form in deficients, accompanied by such laxity of articulations, that it was possible to grasp the points of the shoulders and draw them together until they very nearly met in front.

This form of thorax is characteristically predisposed to pulmonary tuberculosis, and is frequently met with in the macroscelous types.

The commonest deformities of the thorax are those associated with rachitis.

One of the forms regarded as being rachitic in origin is the keel-shaped thorax, in which the sternum is thrust forward and isolated along its median line, like the keel of a boat.

But the thoracic deformities due unquestionably to rickets are of the well-known types that go popularly under the name of hunchback, and are accompanied by curvatures of the vertebral column. The first admonitory symptoms are shown by the so-called rachitic rosary, i.e., by the small swellings due to enlargement of the ends of the ribs at their point of attachment to the sternum. Subsequently, the softened ribs become misshapen in various ways, especially from the fourth rib downward, the upper ribs being fastened and sustained by the thoracic girdle and by the muscles. The curvatures of the vertebral column which accompany rickets are scoliosis or lateral deviation (frequent in school-children) and kyphosis, or deviation in a backward curve; for the most part these two curvatures occur together, so that the vertebral column is thrust outward and at the same time is twisted to one side: kyphoscoliosis.

Pedagogical Considerations.—The following considerations are the natural sequence of what has been said above. Deficiency of the thorax is one of the stigmata left by the school, which in this way tends to make the younger generations feeble and physiologically unbalanced.

The exaggerated importance which is given to the school benches for the purpose of avoiding deformities of the vertebral column deserves to be put aside and forgotten, as an aberration of false hygiene. The bench will not prevent restriction of the thorax; before reaching the critical point which the improved school bench is intended to prevent, many impoverishments of the organism, fatal to robustness and health, and often to life itself (predisposition to tuberculosis!) have been incurred; and there is no other remedy to obviate them than a reform in pedagogic methods. The admonitory fact that neglected, despised, half-starved children have an enormous advantage in the development of the thorax over the more intelligent children who are well-fed and carefully guarded, and solely because the former are free to run the streets, ought to point the direction in which we should look for means of helping the new generations hygienically. They have need of free movement and of air. The recreation rooms which tend to keep the children of the street shut up indoors even during recess are taking from the children of the people the sole advantage that still remained to them. Try to realize that these children are obliged to sleep in dark, crowded environments, and that every night, during the period of sleep, they suffer from such acute poisoning by carbon dioxide that they frequently awaken in the morning with severe pains in the head. The life of the streets is their salvation. We condemn children to death, under the delusion that we are working for their moral good; a perverted human soul may be led back to righteousness; but a consumptive chest can never again become robust. Let those who talk of education and morality and similar themes be sure that they are benefactors and not executioners, and let those who wish to do good seek the light of science.

Curvatures of the vertebral column, such as lordosis and kyphosis, cannot be considered solely in relation to the thorax, but in relation to the pelvis as well, because, especially in lordosis, the lumbar vertebræ are also involved, while the pelvis also suffers a characteristic deformity.