The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Normal Growth in the School Ages.

(1) What is Growth?

What is growth? What is the school age? What is normal growth? Why do we select the school ages?

If we consider the life of the human being from the cradle to the grave, we find it roughly divided into a period of growth, a period of maturity, and a period of decay. The period of growth may be set down as the first twenty-one years of life. And this is the period we wish to study. If we were thinking of the race, we should have to date from long before the cradle to long after the grave; for, with very little reflection, we should discover that the individual has a history as old as the race, which is as old as the world. But growth in its widest sense we cannot here consider. We are thinking only of the short sections from five to fifteen, which is the elementary school age. Scotland and England differ somewhat in this matter; for in Scotland, at least in the north, we habitually think of the elementary school as passing into the secondary school and of the secondary school as passing into the University. In Edinburgh, however, we are becoming more accustomed to the conceptions prevalent in the great English schools, which reckon the school age practically as from ten to eighteen or nineteen. In the merchant schools of Edinburgh, both for boys and for girls, the school age would run to seventeen or eighteen. Similarly, with the other secondary schools. But I am less concerned with a rigid limit of years than with the leading fact that the school age on the whole coincides with the age of growth.

(2) The Stress of School Life.

The school is an artificial environment devised to teach the child how to abstract, how to select from the chaos of the world some guiding lines for his future life. Unlike the family, which is the focus of so many diverse purposes, the school has been devised for one sole purpose,--to direct, to develop, to mould, in a word, to educate. Even the phrase "to educate" is too wide; for the school is only one among many agencies designed to prevent the scattering and the wasting of character. In a society like ours, it may be regarded as a specialization of one function of the family. It assumes that the individual is incapable in his short lifetime of himself attaining to the best that the race has achieved; that, if left to himself, he may develop, but the development will so diverge from the good and the useful that the ultimate result to him is futility for himself and evil for the race. To prevent this relapse, to economize the energies, to make the most of him for the short time that he has to life, to enable him, in a word, to realise himself and evil for the race. To prevent this relapse, to economise the energies, to make the most of him for the short time that he has to live, to enable him, in a word, to realise himself to the best purpose, we place him in restraint. We put upon him heavy burdens, we check, we curb him, we break him under the yoke of civilisation,--pain, sacrifice, duty. We drive him into a system; we catch in him what is good and preserve it; we restrain what is evil and blot it out; we order his day that we shall learn in the shortest time, by the quickest method, the least effort, all that we conceive for him of the good and the beautiful and the true. For these ultimate aims and for nothing less, we place him--tender, fragile, variable, full of mysterious activities--in a new world full of difficulties and depressions and disciplines and broken hopes. The school is the novitiate for the Service of Man, It is a wonder if we begin to ask fundamental questions about growth? Are we not right to inquire whether the task be not too great, the strain too terrible, the trial too prolonged, for a personality so mysterious and so delicate, for a mind so bursting with impulses, for a nervous system so fluid? Is it not well that we should know how the strains and stresses and burdens fit the needs of growth?

It is in the school age that this life normally begins. It is, therefore, our business to discover how the child should grow during this period, how he should develop, what we should provide for, what encourage, what prevent. I assume, too, that whether he remain at home or go abroad into the world, every child comes to his school age, the age when the family is too small, too inadequate for the unfolding mind. And the school age passes. Soon or late, a day comes when Freedom, which is responsibility, sounds the trumpet-call, and the novice passes out to his post. Then there is anguish, there is breaking of hearts, but the division of child and parent is accomplished. To every regret, to every tender remonstrance, to every entreaty, each in his own dialect utters the same reply: "Woman, wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

(3) Brain and Muscle.

The primary intention of the school is to train the mind. In an era of predominant muscle-worship, this may sound like a paradox. But by the mind, I understand the whole character as it is influenced by the discipline of intelligence applied to life. In this wide sense everyone will accept the view. But at the basis of the prevailing practice there seems to lurk the suspicion that the specific work of school, the exercise of the brain and the formation of mental habits, has in it something hostile to physical development. It is quite true that the neglect of the general organism may result in conditions that on occasion, the healthy boy or girl whose time is taken up mainly with the care of physique, with the exercise of muscle, with the direct improvement of every organ except the brain and nervous system, may pass in the race many that care only for mental work, or in physical language, the improvement of the brain. But so far as my observation goes, the danger of long continued mental work is largely imaginary. Nor am I prepared to accept the idea that no young mind should ever be put on the strain. I cannot understand why, without the slightest reproof, a boy may play all day long to his own hurt, but he may not work for a few hours without the risk of observation or comment from the parent or the friend. All work and no play is said to make a dull boy. It may be so. But the most interesting boys of my acquaintance have all been workers, and some of them played a good deal. These half-expressed truths are apt to be the cover for laziness. They can never be a sound guide for school life. I doubt if anything has been done anywhere to show by definite scientific proof that the amount of work done in any of the ordinary schools, whether regulated by code or by the demands of the special class for whom the school is provided, affects seriously the physical growth of any boy or girl. It is very difficult to bring those notions to the test of facts, but the experience of the great school physicians, like Dr. Clement Dukes, of Rugby, should go some way to dissipate our fears. I am inclined to think that more physical damage results from excess of physical exercise, or erroneous pressure of exercise, under unskilled management than from any excess of head-work. If we always have regard to the symptoms of fatigue and act promptly upon them, the risk of excessive head-work in boys of school age is small. I do not see why high pressure should be quite an expected thing in games, a thing to work up to, to train for, to guide the life, while strain of the head, the same head as manages the muscles, is reprobated as dangerous. It is so easily forgotten that muscular fatigue means also indirectly cerebral fatigue. It is the same brain that works the muscles as works the senses. it is governed by similar limits whether the exercise be predominantly of the motor centres or of the sensory centres. Whatever can be properly named "work," whether it be muscular or whether it be purely cerebral, involves cerebral exhaustion as its ultimate stage.

(4) Work, Play and Growth.

The relation of growth to work is very complex, because the children that "work" (in the ordinary economic sense for work for a living) are the poorer children; their nurture in every respect is less adequate than the children of the riches classes enjoy, and it is consequently difficult to disentangle how much of their defective growth is due to labour and how much to deficient or incorrect food or bad housing or want of sleep. But broadly, it is proved that the working children at any given age up to the cessation of growth are smaller in stature and lighter in weight than the children of the leisured or richer classes. It is hardly necessary to prove by figures a fact that has been established in almost every civilized country, not least conclusively in Britain itself. The causes of differences are, as I have indicated, manifold; but broadly they may be summed up in this, --that the children of the poorer classes do more work and the children of the richer classes have longer play. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that both the parents and children of the richer classes have more play, they have better houses, they can arrange that their children shall have better food, more sleep, a longer period of irresponsibility.

(5) The Relation of Growth to Nutrition.

Growth is in some way and in some degree influenced by nutrition, that is, by the food and air supply of the organism. It is a question for evidence whether a child badly nourished in the early years of life ever attains to the same stature as it would have attained to had its nourishment been sufficient. Some have maintained that early starvation does not ultimately affect, growth, provided the food is sufficient in the later growing years. Others, on the contrary, maintain that where nutrition in early life is bad the full statue is never attained. It is certain that, whatever be the effect of nutrition on the ultimate limit of growth, the rate of growth varies according as nutrition is sufficient or insufficient.

"Influence of Nutrition on Growth. There has been much discussion on the influence that nutrition, or lamentation, or other social condition, may have. As far back as 1829, Villermé declared that the stature is higher and growth is more active in the communities that are richer, better nourished and better protected against inclement weather. Quetelet gave out the same opinion, and the majority of those that have studied the question come to the same conclusion; for example, Cowell (1883) who has compared the statistics of 1062 factory children and of the 228 children of the leisured classes; Bowditch also, but with him the defective conditions of existence act more on the height than on the weight, and this is seen in the fact that children of the working classes are heavier, height for height, than children of the leisured classes; these latter being absolutely taller and heavier. One the other hand, opinions diverge; Boudin does not quite believe in the nutritional conditions, and maintains that there is a considerable race effect; Donaldson admits certain action, but maintains that this affects the male sex more than the female. Porter admits that a considerable difference in social condition and in the material prosperity may exist without much influence on growth up to the acceleration that precedes puberty. Key says that want prolongs the period of rapid development consequently supervenes at a later epoch... On the whole, there would be a delay in time; but the final condition would not be altered. Roberts comes to a different conclusion--from the establishment of puberty, growth is more active in the non-working classes, ceasing at nineteen or twenty years of age; in the artisan class, growth is more uniform and continues up to twenty-three or thereby. Still he points out a fact analogous to that spoken of by Key. For him, the growth that precedes puberty begins a year or two earlier in the leisured class, and in these the average stature is greater. The Anthropometrial Committee of England admits also that the leisured classes are, at every age, taller and heavier than the working classes. Gusher and Uhlitch have compared the children of the Burgerschale of Fribourg with those of the inhabitants of the surroundings, and they have found that in stature at the same age the former exceed the latter. The figures following indicated the excess in size of the pupils of the Burgerschale over the children of both sexes of peasants (in centimetres):--

"Hence the conclusion that 'the children of the peasant females are, on average, and without exception smaller; the children of the Burgerschale are greater than the average of the whole. It seems, then, permissible to conclude that the different social conditions in which the children live exercise and essential influence on their physical development.'" --(Dict. de Physiologie--Richet, art. "Croissance").

How far this difference in growth is to be counted a gain mentally or physically is a question that may well be debated. It may be forced growth and like all forcing, may carry with it certain dangers. The boy of the professional classes grows more rapidly than the poorer boy, but ceases to grow at an earlier age. It would be wrong to say that he goes to leaf rather than to seed; but there is always that danger. In any given case, this would be extremely difficult to establish. One must take account of so many factors; first and mainly, the size and growth of the parents, next, the total physical capacity of the child as tested by his total output of work, mental and physical. It is not enough that the bigger and stronger boy should have more staying power on the football field. He must prove his superiority also in the schoolroom, in his college classes, in his profession. In Scotland, we are not inclined to admit that the greatest mental capacity and the best physical form are uniformly found together or that the one is necessary index of the other. We delighted to see fine physical development in men and women, but we delight still more in seeing the fine flower of all development, the clear head, the enduring will, the capacity to devote oneself day by day, year by year, for a lifetime, to the realisation of lofty purposes, to the slavery of the ideal. I do not say one word against the fine results we sometimes see from the muscle worship of the present hour; but i cannot help wondering whether it is always informed of the same spirit or a breath of it that made great the lives of two men for whom we still mourn, Professor Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer. These two, almost from the cradle to the grave, consecrated their every activity to the Service of Man, cultivating every organ, yet living a life of the most severe asceticism and leaving to the world a great inheritance of thought ordered and made. They were, it is true, giants of a great breed; but they lived their long lives because they applied intellect to their every day. We cannot expect the same severity to become very common; but it is more common than we are apt to think, and if we could be sure that the fine form of step public schools did, even on the average, do something to encourage these greatnesses of character, these potencies of will, these finer issues of the spirit, we should utter not one carping word against the games and the races and the exacting disciplines that the sons of our richer orders are made to follow for the whole of the growing ages and sometimes for long after. Even then, the final test is not the immediate growth in form. The test is the life lived through and the work done. And that has its measure in the insurance offices, not in the standard tables of heights and weights. If you want to prove to me that the training of your son has been good, let me see him cross the bar of middle age without mischance or exhaustion. We know but too well that in the poorer orders middle age and pauperism often mean one and the same fact. We know that in the artisan order middle age is the time of great peril. It is so also with the richer orders; but i am willing to be persuaded that the early training in the field does in some measure prolong the age of maturity as it certainly hastens the age of growth. "A Sound mind in a healthy body" is what the whole wold is striving for; but mind as much as muscle is the product of function. It has to be made. It must be built up by exercise of its proper organs. Thoughts are made by thinking, not by waiting for inspiration from trained muscles. And a "healthy body" does not always mean a muscular body, nor is a highly-developed muscular system a necessary condition of sound thinking. It is sometimes, on the contrary, a hindrance. These passing remarks are made here only as a qualification to the undoubted fact that properly regulated physical exercise not only promotes growth, but is essential to it. And by exercise, I mean irresponsible exercise, which is "play"--not responsible muscular labour, which is "work".

(6) Height and Weight as Evidence of Growth.

If a human being were a jelly-fish, we should have to test his growth--not by measuring the height and weight, but by taking the specific gravity and measuring the total volume. but as he is a vertebrate, we have a simple means of testing his growth from year to year. For this purpose, it is a convenient accident that after a certain age the boy stands upright. We, therefore, call it a measurement of height. But all this means is that the bony skeleton grows slowly, and forms a convenient rigid framework for measurement. Every skeleton is normally "padded round with flesh and fat," which also grow with more or less regularity to a possible maximum. Measurement of height alone would be a good index of progress in growth. The measurement of weight is an important supplement. If we have boys enough, and if we measure and weigh them, we are able to fix roughly certain standards of height and weight for every age, and so constant are the averages that we are able to make useful practical tables whereby to test the individual's growth at any given period of his life. In these measurements, we exclude the deformed and those suffering from acute disease. We consider mainly, if not solely, healthy children. Let us look at a few figures compiled for us by the great authorities. In order not to confuse our minds with too many quantities, we shall keep to the figures for boys and girls of ages from five to twenty-two, and we shall use for our illustrations figures collected by the Anthropometrical Committee of the British Association. (See Report of the Royal Commission on Physical Training (Scotland), page 64).

BOYS

GIRLS

Age	Average Height in inches.	Increase in inches.
5	40.55	2.22
6	42.88	2.33
7	44.45	1.57
8	46.60	2.15
9	48.73	2.13
10	51.05	2.32
11	53.10	2.05
12	55.66	2.56
13	57.77	2.11
14	59.80	2.03
15	60.93	1.13
16	61.75	.82
17	62.52	.77
18	62.44	--
19	62.75	.23
20	62.98	.23
21	63.03	.05
22	63.03	--

These figures show, for general population of town and country, averages based on somewhat limited observations, but corresponding with figures subsequently collected. It is to be noticed that the increase in height is not constant. It amounts almost to three inches in the year from five to six. It sinks to about one inch in the year seven to eight. It rises again to nearly three inches at the year eight to nine, falls to a little over two inches at the year nine to ten, to one and a half inch at the year ten to eleven and eleven to twelve. It rises to nearly two inches at the age twelve to thirteen, to two and a half inches at the age thirteen to fourteen, to almost three inches at the age of fourteen to fifteen. From that period onwards the rate of increase in height gradually slows down until at the year twenty-one to twenty-two, the increase is only one-twentieth of an inch. This is for boys. The first great acceleration after infancy is towards the end of the first seven years; the second acceleration is about the years of nine to ten; and the third great acceleration is from the years of thirteen to fifteen. Thus, at the beginning of school life, and at the end of elementary school course, we have two great periods of expansion.

With girls, the rate of increase is somewhat more uniform. Growth begins to slow down at the age of twelve. By the age of seventeen, it has sunk to les than one inch in the year.

Let us now turn to weight. For the corresponding ages in boys, the average weights in pounds are given below:--

The corresponding figures for girls are:--

From these tables we observe that, in boys, the increase in weight roughly follows the increase in height. The two increases do not, however, move more precisely together. There seems first to be a spurt of growth, then a spurt of increase in weight. A great expansion takes place in the years between twelve and sixteen.

With girls, the great expansion takes place in the years between twelve and fourteen.

If, with these averages for the whole country, we compare averages for the Laboring Classes, we find that, on the whole, for boys, the Laboring Classes, even in the country, are equal to the averages for the ages from five to ten and almost equal for the ages up to fourteen. The number of observations, however, is very small, and little importance cane placed on this comparison. The female children of Town Artisans again are distinctly below the average height at all ages up to sixteen.

If, on the other hand, we take the Professional Classes in town and country, we find that for such of the ages as are recorded in these tables (age nine upwards) the Heights of boys are distinctly above the average at all ages. Girls of the same classes are also distinctly above the average at all ages.

If we consider Weight, we fund that on the whole the same relation holds, the Laboring Classes in the country being about equal to the average, and the artisans of the towns perceptibly lower than the average. The same is true both of boys and girls. On the other hand, the Professional Classes come out distinctly over the average in weight; but the difference in favor of the girls of the Professional Classes is not so marked in the weight as it is in height.

Among the Commercial Classes of the towns, it is found that the deviation from the average height is perceptible both in boys and girls. But the increase is not very striking; sometimes the Commercial Classes are even below the average. In weight, boys of the Commercial Classes vary considerably, being sometimes a little above the average and sometimes perceptibly below. The girls, on the whole, approach to the average weights, but tend to fall a little below.

These figures, and the multitudes like them that have been accumulated in many countries, must be studied very minutely if they are to yield guidance in practical life. Her it is enough to emphasise the broad fact that the richer classes show greater height and weight. From this we may draw the general inference that good nurture promotes growth. As we have already pointed out, however, we must not assume that growth is entirely a matter of height and weight. We must check these two indicators by the health and capacity of all the organic systems.

It would be difficult to prove that these differences are radical differences in biological capacity. They are probably only differences due to differences of economic condition. It is probable that the poorer child suffers from long before birth, because the mother is not permitted to rest during pregnancy. It suffers after birth from all the causes that we deplore under the names of bad housing, bad feeding, over-crowding, over-stimulation, over-work. Whatever be the final and complete account of these facts, the broad contrast is there--the public school boy grows more rapidly and grows more than his relative of the other orders.

(7) Diet and Growth

So much for the general relation of good nutrition to growth. Let us specialise a little to indicate what the actual diet of a school boy should aim at. As Dr. Burney Yeo points out:--"It should be remembered that the education of the mind is, and should be, a 'life-long' process--there is no need of hurry, but that the development of the body is strictly limited to a certain period of existence and becomes finally and irrevocably arrested at the given date.--(Food in Health and Disease, page 268). Our chief authority here again must be Dr. Clement Dukes, whose thirty years' experience of Rugby gives him a unique title to our attention. Dr. Dukes insists that the likes and dislikes of school children should be considered. Fats and starches are essential, but fat is very frequently repulsive to children. It is possible that education might reduce the revulsion, and certainly the effort should be made; but, failing this, more sugar is essential. For the younger boys, Dr. Dukes recommends meat in some form at least once a day. For the public school boy proper, who is growing rapidly, he recommends meat twice a day. What quantities? Here Dr. Dukes' figure sounds high to our Scottish ears. He insists that in the twenty-four hours, the meat or nitrogenous food supplied "should be one pound of uncooked meat, including fat, which means 20 per cent. of weight of bone, 20 per cent. of weight which is lost in cooking, therefore giving 60 per cent. of fat and lean cooked meat, or 9.6 ounces." --(The Book of Health, page 693, art. "Health at School"). (Footnote: See also The Essentials of School Diet, by Clement Dukes, M.D., B.S., Lond. Rivingtons, London, 1899.) He adds: "I have given the full amount of meat that is wholesome for the strongest and biggest boys, or those who are growing rapidly. I have done this purposely, though I am aware that younger and less robust boys could not get through the amount I have specified; for them the three quarters of a pound of uncooked meat is the usual amount required." Fish he strongly recommends. But though he wrote twenty years ago, he might repeat his lament that this excellent food is yet waiting an adequate means of distribution. Vegetables he also, of course, insists upon. He found that in the autumn and winter, when fresh vegetables fell off, there was always "plenty of eczema." I am inclined to question which was the chief factor in producing the eczema--the excess of meat or the deficiency of vegetables. The two chief meals of the day must be breakfast a mid-day dinner. Otherwise, the working capacity of the boy is seriously interfered with. In this, most workers with the brain will agree. Nothing can well be less scientific than loading the stomach in the evening with a staple meal and then expecting the brain to turn on its full power. Where heavy meals are taken late, the sleep cannot be good and the head-work will be worth little or nothing. It was Professor Bain's custom for over fifty years to do his intellectual work at least several hours after he had had food--on a fasting stomach, in fact. The brain works best when the stomach has least to do. Even in growing boys this is true. From all I can gather, the chief danger of many schools is the danger of over-feeding. But on this matter I speak without authority.

For those that would study more fully the diet of the growing school boy, no better guide can be found than the writings of Dr. Dukes. As I have said, he takes the strong English view of meat and its substitutes. Perhaps it is our Scottish training that makes us hesitate on the point, but I cannot help feeling that meat occupies too large a place in the economy of every public school, as, indeed, in most other economies. It is right to add, however, that Dr. Dukes intends his "pound of meat" to be rather the standard for "nitrogenous food" than an absolute prescription of so much ox-flesh.--(See Essentials of School Diet, 2nd edition, page 185). In this, as in other matters, Dr. Dukes' opinions are based on extended concrete experience, check by scientific theory.

(8) Alcohol and Growth.

It is, I believe, the custom in some English public schools to supply the boys with beer or other such alcoholic drink for supper. I do not know whether any Scottish boarding school follows this custom or not. Stimulants of all kinds doubtless affect growth in some way, but the parent that imagines alcohol in any form to be essential to boys of any age from five to fourteen, or for that matter from five to twenty-five, should be recommended to study elementary physiology for a few days. If, after that, and after reading what Dr. Clement Dukes (Footnote: Alcohol and Childhood, Church of England Temperance Publication Depot, 9, Bridge Street, Westminster, price of half-penny.) has to say on the topic, he still persists in his curious opinion, he should consult his family physician in his own, if not in his child's interest. There may be forms of beer or wine that do boys little harm, but I have not yet met with them, and if their use is sanctioned by custom anywhere, it is a "custom more hounoured in the breach than in observance." At any rate, if the parent, knowing what the results are, feeds his boy on beer, he might at least spare us the hypocrisy of lamenting the vicious consequence of his prescription.

(9) Sleep and Growth.

What relaxation is to the muscles, sleep is to the brain. For the growing boy, abundant sleep is essential; for the growing boy whose brain is under training, sleep is still more essential. Boys of ten, according to Dr. Dukes, "require eleven hours of sleep and the best time for it is, except on the very hottest nights in summer, from 8:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. For boys under thirteen years of age, ten hours and a half should be set apart, from 9 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. For boys above thirteen, the eight and a half or nine hours permitted, but never obtained, are not too much, if enough, considering their active period of growth, and the amount of bodily and mental exercise they undergo. In bed at 10 p.m., which means sleep not much before 11 p.m. and called at 6:30 a.m. for chapel at 7 or 7:30 a.m., I believe, the rule in most public schools. With only this amount of sleep boys seem weary, and look as if they did not get sufficient rest."--(Book of Health, page 688).

It seems to me that a simple rule for all boys is that, given good health and vigour, they should sleep when they are sleepy, never attempt mental work when drowsy, rise early only if they can do so with vigor and not without too great unwillingness. One mother known to me has a very tall son of sixteen years of age. He is a head-worker and a fairly hard player. He has often pleaded to be permitted to sit up late to his work, but permission has been refused until he shows signs of being ready to get up in the morning when called. It is, I quite recognise, a severe test; but it is physiologically sound, and boys brought up on that principle will go further and, in the end, do more than those whose natural appetite for sleep is compelled to conform to the occasionally morbid habits of their parents. If there is no disease, the appetites of the organism are a safer guide for practice than the theories of any school.

(10) Some Danger Points.

The saints of sport are not long lived. They have consecrated themselves to the worship of muscle. They forget that the same brain that should enable them to think is equally exhausted by the discipline of the muscles and the discipline of the mind. Persistent stimulation to muscular exertion has its dangers for the growing youth. Dr. Clement Dukes, to whom, in so many ways, this country owes so much, has shown by concrete facts that at the onset of adolescence there is great danger to the kidney, and that the indiscriminate indulgence in the hard physical sports of the public schools results very frequently in the temporary or permanent damage to it. The reason he offers is simple and convincing. It ought to be in the mind of the careful parent when his son or daughter is passing into the expansive age. It is this--As adolescence supervenes, the heart grows rapidly. This is not all. It grows more rapidly in proportion than the other blood vessels. The result is that it is for the time too strong a pump for the size of the vessels it has to keep filled. The results of this is too great pressure in the vessels of the kidney, and the result of this, in turn, is inflammation or congestion. The he has found very common among the boys at public schools. The damage done by excessive exercise when this condition threatens can hardly be over-estimated. It may mean lifelong enfeeblement. It may mean damage not to the kidney alone, which would be bad enough, but to the heart also and the organs directly and indirectly depending on it. I do not particularise this to alarm, but it is a fact of experience and it should be always kept in mind as among the possibilities of development. That Dr. Dukes should be able to record case after case is proof sufficient that we are dealing with a fairly common result of the ordinary school exercises of our great schools. Doubtless the headmasters of the schools are alive to these facts, but the parents should equally know them and have them for a guide.

I am not able to give parallel facts of the dangers that attend the onset of adolescence in the girl. These are perfectly well known, but it is open to question whether they are always handled with perfect wisdom.

(11) General Tests of Healthy Growth.

How shall we tell whether a boy is growing at the correct rate? How are we to know whether his life at school interferes with the increase of his muscles, his bones, his nervous system? The parent cannot always be consulting tables of height and weight. He cannot be always weighing his child, week by week, to see whether he is maintaining his pace upwards. Neither can he be for ever calling in the doctor. He--should I not rather say she, for it is normally to the mother that this work falls--she ought to have some guide safe enough to enable her to prevent injury to the child. Does physiology offer any such guide? I think it does.

Let us assume that a child of competent parents has come to the age of five, that he has had all the advantages of good food, cleanliness, good air, freedom of play, in a word all that constitutes good nurture as it is organised by the parent devoted to the scientific care of children. The parents are confronted with the problem--Shall we send him to school? How shall the problem be answered? If it were put to me, I should recommend the following course.

Let the child be examined with minute care by the family physician who knows the family history, the family habits, what reliance can be placed on the parents' undertaking, what ailments the child has passed through, what in reason he may yet have to encounter, what rate his mental and physical development has maintained. Let there be a detailed examination of the whole body, both in its general aspects and in its particular organs. Let the physician observe and record the state of development, the state of the nutrition, the sufficiency of fat, of muscle, the condition of the blood, the condition of the blood, the condition of bones, joints, skin, glands, heart and circulation, lungs and respiration, eyes and vision, ears and hearing, nose and nasal respiration, throat, teeth, digestion, what sleep is taken, what the readiness for play is, what the mental capacity in general as shown by the child's history. Whatever defects in any of these relations he may discover, he should, as far as possible, rectify before the child enters on the new life. Let us assume that he has found certain defects of the eye and ear and throat. He must either have them forthwith rectified or so inform the parent that the defect may be watched to an issue and not permitted to interfere with development. Let the parent study the record. Let it be the guide at every stage. If the child is found fit for school, let the experiment be tried. Let the effects on his nervous system be watched. If it be found that he maintains his vigor, his nutrition, his diet, his sleep, his readiness to play, then he does not find the load too heavy. If the new life results in restlessness, if the child grows nervous, if he readily breaks down, if he shows signs of fatigue, if he cannot sleep peacefully for the full time, if he dreams of his lessons, if he acts in his sleep the work of the day, if he complains of headache, if he has no disposition for play, if he grows pale, if he loses appetite, if he loses fat, then once more the physician should be consulted. We have assumed that the school he attends is hygienically good, that the air-space during work time is adequate, that work is kept at a fitting quantity. If any of these symptoms persist, let the child be freed from every care and permitted to play. If on the contrary he shows none of these signs, it may be inferred that the new life will not touch his growth. But as a safeguard he should be examined at least once, if not twice, in every school year, in the detailed way I have indicated. So long as the physiological systems work well, the rate of growth is of little consequence.

(12) Conclusion.

Did time permit, I should have wished to go a little further along these tracks. I should like to analyse the concept of growth as it is manifested in some of the individual organs of the body. I should like to show how the heart increases; how the brain grows in complexity; how the muscles keep up a perpetual rhythm in response to the demands of mind; how the intellect grows synthetically from its first germs to its final revelations in science and action and institutions; how, in a sense, the whole world we live in is of our own making and is our own. But were I to follow these lines of speculation, I should have to call my paper by another name; although I should still be but showing forth the relations of the infinitely subtle mind of the child to the world he has come awake in to the world where he will one day fall asleep again leaving to it his work, evil or good.

      They are but sailing foam-bells,
      Along Thought's causing stream,
      And take their light and sun-colour
      From Himm that send the dream.

Typed by Sarah Delgado, Oct. 2024