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: 

[1] [Sidenote:  Curious deductions from an excessive death rate.]

Upon this fact the most wonderful deductions have been strung.  For a long time an announcement something like the following has been going the round of the papers:—­“More than 25,000 children die every year in London under 10 years of age; therefore we want a Children’s Hospital.”  This spring there was a prospectus issued, and divers other means taken to this effect:—­“There is a great want of sanitary knowledge in women; therefore we want a Women’s Hospital.”  Now, both the above facts are too sadly true.  But what is the deduction?  The causes of the enormous child mortality are perfectly well known; they are chiefly want of cleanliness, want of ventilation, want of whitewashing; in one word, defective household hygiene.  The remedies are just as well known; and among them is certainly not the establishment of a Child’s Hospital.  This may be a want; just as there may be a want of hospital room for adults.  But the Registrar-General would certainly never think of giving us as a cause for the high rate of child mortality in (say) Liverpool that there was not sufficient hospital room for children; nor would he urge upon us, as a remedy, to found an hospital for them.