Where and when, then, are “only” children to receive this necessary social training, occupants as they are of solitary nurseries; or where are these qualities to be developed in the millions of children reared under circumstances of such acute overcrowding and poverty that the amenities of life are obscured by its fierce and exhausting conditions? Observation shows that the function of accomplishing this training is steadily devolving upon the school. Unfortunately, though the school does offer necessary opportunities for social intercourse, this intercourse is relatively of an advanced type, which presupposes 277 some previous training in the more elementary principles of community life, most fitly acquired at home. This tendency to force the school to supplant instead of to supplement home training must be resisted, as it involves loss to parents as well as to the children themselves.
The stress here laid upon the social function of the home may seem to some exaggerated, and its association with the subject of this paper may appear far-fetched; but to the writer its pressing importance calls for this emphasis, for its connection with habits of sanitary practice within and without the home is of the closest. The social spirit is the very essence of sympathy; it exercises the imagination, it widens the horizon, it quickens the sense of duty and of self-respect. If graduation through the school of domestic, social training be omitted in childhood, the realisation of personal responsibility is too often indefinitely postponed. Consideration for others, care for their welfare and personal sacrifice for their protection, must ever bulk largely in importance throughout life, and must always be associated with self-respect and self-control. When this sense of personal responsibility is habitual, conduct which makes for limitations of health in self, family, or neighbours will appear unjustifiable; and neglect of either domestic or civic duties will become as unpardonable as it is unpatriotic.
But antecedent to the attainment of this ideal, fundamental even to its entertainment, is the adjustment or readjustment of home influences or 278 methods, as the case may be, to a higher standard. A better understanding of the constitution of those for whose welfare the home is established must also be insisted upon as an integral part of general education.
It may be wise to point out that no proposal to sweep away in wholesale fashion all the domestic traditions and family methods of this or any other phase of civilisation is even suggested. Apart from the impossibility of such a holocaust, treasures of great worth have been handed on to us by our forebears, of which the majority only need some slight readjustment to enrich many generations yet to come.
To take a somewhat extreme example. The mention of such homely, old-fashioned, domestic remedies as black-currant tea for a bad cough, or soap and sugar plasters for a boil—genuine relics from our grandmothers—now usually excite a smile of derision; nevertheless they have been instanced by one of our most able living pathologists[120] for their admirable adaptation to their purpose, and have been shown to rest upon a hitherto unsuspected basis of physiological therapeutics.
Another illustration may be drawn from the nursery tradition that bad temper is often effectually cured by a dose of rhubarb.[121] Carefully conducted 279 observations upon children confirm the conventional connection of peevishness with disordered digestion. It has been found that gastric indigestion produces oversensitiveness, fretfulness, and irritability, while chronic constipation results in erratic conduct, stupidity, languor, headache, and moodiness. These effects may be so far-reaching that, for no other reason than chronic constipation, children may lose a large proportion of the advantages provided in school life; they may even run the risk of being classed as “backward,” from the interference with mental progress of the food poisons reabsorbed into their circulation.
Modern methods of child training lay great emphasis upon the prevention of these or kindred conditions by early formation of good habits; or, when carelessness necessitates curative treatment, our old nurse’s panacea of drugs is the last resort; the first consists in attempts to re-establish normal functions by the more natural means of suited food and special exercise.
It is time, too, that the so-called “hardening fallacies,” responsible for the maiming of countless lives, were finally exposed and exploded. The idea, for example, dies hard that beneficial endurance is cultivated by exposure to cold; therefore, bare necks, arms and legs are lauded as means of developing a Spartan spirit in young children. Now no profound study of hygiene is required to demonstrate the close interdependence of warmth with growth and nutrition, or to show that the chilly 280 and underclothed, sedentary child is both stunted and starved; whereas the suitably clothed and freely active child is able to carry on unhampered the necessary processes of growth and development.[122] So important is warmth to the infant, that eighty per cent. of the total energy derived from its food is utilised for the maintenance of the body temperature essential to growth and for the activities of the organic and muscular systems.
Children, in accordance with the law of the relation between mass and surface in a cube, have, relatively to their mass, about thrice the body surface possessed by an adult. The greatest loss of heat occurs by radiation from the skin and by the evaporation of sweat, therefore undue loss from this extensive area should be prevented by its suitable covering; otherwise the child is placed at a far more serious disadvantage than would be suffered by an adult similarly situated; for in his case growth as well as equilibrium must be maintained. Few parents realise the further fact that the power of heat regulation is very imperfect at birth; indeed its slow development accounts for the instability of a child’s temperature for many years after. The fallacy therefore of seeking to strengthen a young life by inadequate clothing, by enforced and prolonged inactivity, or by abstinence from the source of all energy—food—must be persistently exposed. Quite recently, also, Dr. Eurich has advanced evidence 281 to show that the quality of sleep is adversely affected where the sleeper is insufficiently protected from cold, thus emphasising the injury to health associated with going to bed with cold feet.
All parents are ambitious that their offspring shall be distinguished by the energy, the stability, the endurance and the power which characterise the cream of humanity. The lives of young people are carefully planned with this object in view. The waking hours of most girls and boys are distributed in ordered sequence between what is intended to be concentrated work and vigorous more or less exciting play. But the fact has been very commonly ignored that these young people are built up of young cells, which cells are passing through almost every conceivable phase of instability in the course of development; consequently recurring periods of leisure and rest are as important to nutrition and nervous stability, more especially in the case of girls, as are the most elaborate arrangements for exercise. Thus it comes about that many youths and maidens suffer from chronic though unrecognised fatigue, while others are unable to employ pleasurably even a short space of “time to themselves,” finding no interest in occupations from which excitement is absent. The habitual limitation of the hours of sleep among the rising generation is equally serious. The loss which would be unbearable,[123] says Dr. Acland, 282 even among our most favoured children, were it not for the indulgence permitted them during their long holidays. Is it not a parental duty to insist upon the necessary provision for rest being made in every school, and ought not inviolable rules upon the subject be laid down in their home circles? Sleep, be it remembered, is the property of animals possessed of brains and endowed with consciousness; it affords mechanical rest, and is accompanied by a respite from the chemical changes which are particularly rapid during childhood and adolescence. The intense activity of the child’s waking hours must be counterbalanced by ample periods of entire rest. Habits of prolonged profound sleep are said to be the best investment against mental instability and insanity; yet parents permit a constant loss of from two to four hours’ sleep each night throughout the long period of immaturity.[124] Our newspapers and lunatic asylums bear evidence to the price paid for this now inexcusable carelessness.