seven infants in this civilized land of England perishes before it is
one year old? That, in London, two in every five die before they are
five years old? And, in the other great cities of England, nearly one
out of two?[1] "The life duration of tender babies" (as some Saturn,
turned analytical chemist, says) "is the most delicate test" of sanitary
conditions. Is all this premature suffering and death necessary? Or did
Nature intend mothers to be always accompanied by doctors? Or is it
better to learn the piano-forte than to learn the laws which subserve
the preservation of offspring?

Macaulay somewhere says, that it is extraordinary that, whereas the laws
of the motions of the heavenly bodies, far removed as they are from us,
are perfectly well understood, the laws of the human mind, which are
under our observation all day and every day, are no better understood
than they were two thousand years ago.

But how much more extraordinary is it that, whereas what we might call
the coxcombries of education--_e.g._, the elements of astronomy--are now
taught to every school-girl, neither mothers of families of any class,
nor school-mistresses of any class, nor nurses of children, nor nurses
of hospitals, are taught anything about those laws which God has
assigned to the relations of our bodies with the world in which He has
put them. In other words, the laws which make these bodies, into which
He has put our minds, healthy or unhealthy organs of those minds, are
all but unlearnt. Not but that these laws--the laws of life--are in a
certain measure understood, but not even mothers think it worth their
while to study them--to study how to give their children healthy
existences. They call it medical or physiological knowledge, fit only
for doctors.

Another objection.

We are constantly told,--"But the circumstances which govern our
children's healths are beyond our control. What can we do with winds?
There is the east wind. Most people can tell before they get up in the
morning whether the wind is in the east."

To this one can answer with more certainty than to the former
objections. Who is it who knows when the wind is in the east? Not the
Highland drover, certainly, exposed to the east wind, but the young lady
who is worn out with the want of exposure to fresh air, to sunlight, &c.
Put the latter under as good sanitary circumstances as the former, and
she too will not know when the wind is in the east.

FOOTNOTES: