perative
infinitive. What does that mean?

An obligation, a command, a prohibition.--Go on, explain. The
obligation of respect ... the command to respect rights ...
the prohibition of stealing. How may all these things be
summed up? _In doing no evil_."

* * * * *

=Positive science makes its appearance in the schools=.--Positive
science was invited to enter into schools as into a chaos where it was
necessary to separate light from darkness, a place of disaster where
prompt succor was essential.

* * * * *

=Discoveries of medicine: distortions and diseases=.--The first science,
indeed, to penetrate into the school was medicine, which organized a
special hygiene for the occasion, a kind of Red Cross service. The
most interesting part of the hygiene that penetrates into schools was
that which diagnosed and described the "diseases of school children,"
that is to say, the maladies contracted solely as a result of study in
school. The most prevalent of these maladies are spinal curvature and
myopia. The first is caused by excessive sitting, and by the injurious
position of the shoulders in writing. The second arises from the fact
that in the spot where the child has to remain seated, there is not
sufficient light for him to see clearly; or this spot is too far from
the blackboard, or from the places where the child has to read, and
the prolonged effort of accommodation induces myopia. Other minor
generalized maladies were also described: an organic debility so
widely diffused that hygiene prescribed as an ideal treatment a
gratuitous distribution of cod-liver oil or of reconstituent remedies
in general to all pupils. Anemia, liver complaints, and neurasthenia
were also studied as school diseases.

Thus a new field was opened to hygiene in connection with the most
fertile source of professional disease, and reading and writing were
carefully studied in relation to pedagogical methods, and in relation
to spinal curvature and defective refraction of the eyes.

The figure of the child, that victim of unsuitable and
disproportionate work, was not hereby brought into strong relief, as
might have been expected, by the aid of medicine, but a new branch of
"legal medicine" came into being. It was, indeed, medicine which drew
attention to the diseases and deaths of the victims in orphan asylums,
victims of artificial or irrational feeding, in conjunction with wet
nursing;