BOOK THE THIRD. CHAP. I.· Considerations on the Physical Education of the Anormal State. I, that am rudely stamp'd I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion; That dogs bark at me as I halt by them. SHAKESPEARE. No, Rousseau! all is not perfect that comes from the hands of nature! all does not degenerate in the hands of man, who neither loves deformities nor monsters! We are not only born weak, we want not strength alone; for notwithstanding the greatest possible care, the best organized laws, we are not always brought into this world in a healthy state. At Sparta, where every thing was done to promote the beauty and vigour of the human species, still there were deformities; and notwithstanding the laws of Lycurgus, all was not perfect that came from the hands of nature. It is the general opinion of most philosophers, that when man is born, the series of evils that assail him through life commence, and that these evils result from our social state; but they may be traced to a far more remote source; they take rise with our organization; "and the annals of science," says Billiard, "serve to testify that the infant has contracted in its mother's womb affections of which the fatal results are too evident at its birth." Daily facts confirm this proposition. Children may come into the world healthy, diseased, convalescent, or perfectly cured of an ancient malady, which proposition is directly contrary to Rousseau's opinion. Give, therefore, to Rousseau healthy children, free from defect, with a fine vigorous constitution; for Rousseau will not educate weak and sickly children. But give to us those children that the laws of Lycurgus would have condemned to the apothetes, and that the philosopher of Geneva looked on with contempt, and thought unworthy of his precepts. If children are sometimes born with the seeds of diseases, which, far from being arrested at birth, continue to follow their divers stages, how important is it not, for parents and children, that science should observe the external signs of these congenital predisposition to diseases, so as to suspend, if possible, their progress! If children bring into the world an evil conformation, how far superior is art, that seeks to bring these defects of nature to the human type, to that savage philosophy which sacrifies human beings, because it seems too difficult to cure their defects! When children are born healthy, physical education is simple and regular. The causes that produce diseases in adults must be avoided, as these causes act more powerfully and promptly in early age than at a later period of life. Children must have the genial warmth of the sun, pure air, wholesome nourishment, and good exercise; the human plant will then be developed in its full rectitude and beauty. But if the child be born diseased; if it have suffered either in the womb, or in its passage into the world, it must not be hoped that nature unassisted by art, will bring the suffering child to a normal state. If art and science be not called to its aid, the child will perish, or carry through life, the burden of a deformed and painful organization. We mean not to speak of the obstacles that may prevent the vitality of the newly-born babe; this sketch is rapidly drawn in our chapter on Infancy. We have here to treat of the constitutional or acquired state with which children may, for some time, drag on a painful existence, but when thus afflicted seldom reach beyond adult age. The aberrations of nature are numerous, both in the animal and vegetable kingdom. Among these aberrations, a great number of those relating to the shape of the individual are not opposed to the establishment of life, and to its greater or less prolongation; yet there is no deformity that is not prejudicial to the action of some organ or its functions, and that is not through life, a cause of physical or moral suffering, sometimes of premature death. There are predispositions, or constitutional weaknesses, not noticed at birth; it would, for instance, be difficult to say, whether a newly-born child was predisposed to nervousness, scrofula, rachitism, or consumption. Numerous deviations in the normal state are only manifested in the course of some years; this observation is mostly applicable to the osseous system, the deformities of which are not always evident at birth. As children grow up, and the organs are called into action, their healthy or morbid state becomes apparent; and if the morbid state be neglected, it becomes grafted on the constitution, and injures it. The nervous state is manifested in infancy by convulsions; in adult age, by madness. Scrofula, which delays growth; rachitism, which deforms the solid parts; and tubercular rachitism, or consumption; such are the constitutional defects, which do not prevent children from living during a certain time, but prevent their reaching to an advanced age, and render them objects of continual suffering. Thus, predisposition to nervous or cerebral diseases, to scrofula, rachitism, and tubercles, are the four chief maladies, the principle of which we bring into the world at our birth, and they claim special physical education, at an earlier period, than deviations in the normal state which may be considered acquired. The plan we have laid down is by no means easy, but we are not to make a romance of physical education; we have not chosen our Emile; we do not cast deformed children into the apothetes; we do not refuse them our care because they are suffering. Let those parents, into whose hands this work may fall, be persuaded that it is far more difficult to treat this subject so that it may be useful to every mother, than it would be were it intended only for medical men; but let it be read attentively, for these pages shew the actual state of science on subjects which must deeply interest all those who have children. If nervous, scrofulous, or tuberculous predispositions may be acquired, they may also be prevented. But what is scarcely in the power of art to cure, is the morbid state of the whole organization when struck with death. Look to science for advice and assistance before it is too |