um shoes for those children whose parents are too poor to
provide them; and again, in Scandinavia there is very frequently the
provision of bathrooms in which the pupils can have a shower bath and
rub-down after the exercises. These bathrooms in connection with the
gymnasia need not necessarily be costly; indeed many of them in
Stockholm and Denmark merely consist of troughs in the cement floor,
on the edge of which the children sit in a row while they receive a
shower bath over their heads and bodies. The feet get well washed in
the trough, and the smart douche of water on head and shoulders acts
as an admirable tonic.

Another exercise which ought to be specially dear to a nation of
islanders is swimming, and this, again, is a relatively cheap luxury
too much neglected amongst us. Certainly there are public baths, but
there are not enough to permit of all the elementary school children
bathing even once a week, and still less have they the opportunity of
learning to swim. There is much to be done yet before we can be justly
proud of our national system of education. We must not lose sight of
the ideal with which we started--viz. that we should endeavour to do
the best that is possible for our young people in body, soul, and
spirit. The three parts of our nature are intertwined, and a duty
performed to one part has an effect on the whole.

CHAPTER III.

CARE OF THE ADOLESCENT GIRL IN SICKNESS.

If measured by the death-rate the period of adolescence should cause
us little anxiety, but a careful examination into the state of health
of children of school age shows us that it is a time in which
disorders of health abound, and that although these disorders are not
necessarily, nor even generally, fatal, they are frequent, they spoil
the child's health, and inevitably bear fruit in the shape of an
injurious effect on health in after life.

That the health of adolescents should be unstable is what we ought to
expect from the general instability of the organism due to the
rapidity of growth and the remarkable developmental changes that are
crowded into these few years. Rapidity of growth and increase of
weight are very generally recognised, although their effects upon
health are apt to be overlooked. On the other hand, the still more
remarkable development that occurs in adolescence is very generally
ignored.

As a general rule the infectious fevers, the so-called childish
diseases--such as measles, chicken-po