For let me ask you, ladies, with all courtesy, but with all earnestness—­Are you aware of certain facts, of which every one of those excellent medical men is too well aware?  Are you aware that more human beings are killed in England every year by unnecessary and preventable diseases than were killed at Waterloo or at Sadowa?  Are you aware that the great majority of those victims are children?  Are you aware that the diseases which carry them off are for the most part such as ought to be specially under the control of the women who love them, pet them, educate them, and would in many cases, if need be, lay down their lives for them?  Are you aware, again, of the vast amount of disease which, so both wise mothers and wise doctors assure me, is engendered in the sleeping-room from simple ignorance of the laws of ventilation, and in the school-room likewise, from simple ignorance of the laws of physiology? from an ignorance of which I shall mention no other case here save one—­that too often from ignorance of signs of approaching disease, a child is punished for what is called idleness, listlessness, wilfulness, sulkiness; and punished, too, in the unwisest way—­by an increase of tasks and confinement to the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already overtasked, and depressing still more, by robbing it of oxygen and of exercise, a system already depressed?  Are you aware, I ask again, of all this?  I speak earnestly upon this point, because I speak with experience.  As a single instance:  a medical man, a friend of mine, passing by his own school-room, heard one of his own little girls screaming and crying, and went in.  The governess, an excellent woman, but wholly ignorant of the laws of physiology, complained that the child had of late become obstinate and would not learn; and that therefore she must punish her by keeping her indoors over the unlearnt lessons.  The father, who knew that the child was usually a very good one, looked at her carefully for a little while; sent her out of the school-room; and then said, “That child must not open a book for a month.”  “If I had not acted so,” he said to me, “I should have had that child dead of brain-disease within the year.”

Now, in the face of such facts as these, is it too much to ask of mothers, sisters, aunts, nurses, governesses—­all who may be occupied in the care of children, especially of girls—­that they should study thrift of human health and human life, by studying somewhat the laws of life and health?  There are books—­I may say a whole literature of books—­written by scientific doctors on these matters, which are in my mind far more important to the school-room than half the trashy accomplishments, so-called, which are expected to be known by governesses.  But are they bought?  Are they even to be bought, from most country booksellers?  Ah, for a little knowledge of the laws to the neglect of which is owing so much fearful disease, which, if it does not produce