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or three years after the system has acquired its full development. Those whose health has been much impaired from any cause, had better delay a few years longer.

Still, some who are predisposed to consumption, and many with imperfect health, will marry and cannot the development of this disease, in the offspring of such, be prevented? I confidently answer, yes. Very much may be done to prevent it, by a proper course of physical education by attention to the diet, dress, exercise, and amusements of children and youth. Those children hereditarily predisposed to consumption, require very different treatment from what they generally receive. Instead of being nurtured like tender plants within doors, or confined at school, they should pass much of the time, during mild weather, in the open air, engaged in play and pleasant exercise. The first object of parents or guardians, as relates to the early education of such children, should be, to give them healthy bodies - to endow them with good physical powers. They should not seek to develope at an early age the intellect of these delicate beings, and strive to place a Corinthian capital on a column of sand; but should endeavor in the first place to make the foundation good, and then whatever is added will be serviceable and enduring.

First, of Diet. All children, more especially the children of enfeebled or consumptive parents, require from their earliest infancy a large supply of nutriment. If the mother is feeble, or exhibits a strong predisposition to disease, a healthy nurse should be procured for the infant. By adopting this course, I have seen the delicate infants of feeble mothers apparently rescued from the grave, and become healthy and robust. After the usual term of nursing has passed, plain nourishing food - all that the child craves - and considerable animal food too, should be allowed. This last is quite essential for children predisposed to scrofulous diseases, and also to prevent, in children who are not, the formation of a tendency to this disease. I fear some have opinions on this subject, which if generally reduced to practice in this country, would prove very detrimental, and tend to produce a degenerate race of men and women, feeble in body and mind. Some persons appear to believe that disease and death lurk in most kinds of rich, nourishing food; that not only pies and cakes are injurious to health, but that fine bread and animal food are also, and that children should be sparingly fed, and chiefly supported on vegetable diet. Those who hold and promulgate such opinions-true disciples of Sancho Panza's doctor, who represented all ordinary food injurious to health-appear to be increasing in this country, and may for a while do mischief. In a hot climate, vegetable food may be sufficient, but in ours, I am confident a more nutritious and stimulating diet is essential to the growth and perfection of the system, and to the full development of all the powers of body and mind.

The history of diseases in all ages of the world abundantly prove, that insufficiency of food, especially in early life, is by far the most productive cause of disease. This is the cause of most of the scrofula, of rickets, and other diseases that rage among the poor. It is this that causes the early decrepitude and look of premature old age which is exhibited even by the youth in many parts of Europe. Children brought up on coarse food, but little nutritious, or that are supported chiefly on vegetable food, are very apt to be scrofulous. Even in domestic animals, scrofulous affections, or a general disease of the glands,

is caused by want of nutritious food. Scrofula is common among the poor, and those supported on weak broths and coarse bread. It is often produced among the children of charitable establishments, when but little or no animal food is allowed. This and other diseases have been caused by diminishing the nourishment, and withdrawing animal food, in prisons and penitentiaries, and has ceased on returning to better diet. It may be said that the Irish, some of whom live mostly on potatoes, are healthy. This is incorrect. Probably in no other country is there as much sickness as in Ireland. A late medical writer estimates the annual amount of cases of fever alone in Ireland, at one hundred and eight thousand, or one in seventy-two of the population. The fever that rages there, is of the low typhus kind, and has been attributed to the enfeebled state of the inhabitants, caused by want of nourishment. Contrast with this, a statement made by Dr. Tweedie, physician to the Fever Hospital in London, that, though almost every description of mechanics had been at some period admitted there, yet he adds, 'I do not recollect a single instance of a butcher being sent to the establishment.' Similar observations have been made at other hospitals. In hot climates, animal food is not so necessary the appetite does not naturally crave it. In such climates, vegetable food appears to be sufficiently stimulating. So some individuals in cold climates do not require animal food, and some may have better health by abstaining from it. But such instances, I suspect, are extremely rare, especially among children in good health, who require when growing much invigorating nutriment. Let me therefore entreat those who have the care of children, to be careful of denying their requests for food, but, on the contrary, be mindful to supply them with an abundance that is nutritious. I beseech them to be guided by the same common sense and experience which guides farmers in their endeavors to raise large and handsome animals. To make children grow well and become vigorous and healthy to make fine animals of them - is the first duty of their parents and guardians.

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As regards the influence of diet in producing the disease we are considering, it should be known that most European writers on this disease have stated, as a singular fact, that butchers and their families very rarely have consumption. Thackrah, in his excellent work on the Effects of Trades and Professions on Health and Longevity,' says: 'Butchers and the slaughter-men, their wives and errand-boys, almost all eat fresh cooked meat at least twice a day; they are plump and rosy, cheerful and good-natured. Consumption is remarkably rare among them. If we see a consumptive-looking youth among them, we generally find that his parents, aware of an hereditary disposition to consumption, brought him up to the business, with the hope of averting the formidable malady.' Many others have alluded to the fact that butchers are generally exempt from scrofula and consumption.

Let no one understand from these remarks on diet, that I am an advocate for gluttony, or gormandizing, or that I deny evils do not result from over-eating. All I wish to have understood, is, that I believe these evils have by many been greatly overrated more than the truth will and that nutritious food, well cooked, animal food, is not the cause of many of the evils that flesh is heir to, but, on the contrary, the want of it is; and there is danger in our climate of enfeebling children, and preventing the full development of their bodies of causing

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scrofulous and consumptive diseases - by a very spare, innutritious, or exclusively vegetable diet.

Dress. This should vary with the season. The practice of partially clothing infants, leaving the arms naked in cold weather, etc., is cruel and dangerous. Probably no one cause sweeps off so many infants as cold. From observations made in Europe, it appears that the mortality among infants is greater in cold than in warm climates - that the mortality is much greater in the cold season of the year than in the warm and that a much greater proportion of children live, that are born in the spring or summer, than of those born in the winter. Great caution should be used not only in dressing children warm, but in exposing them to cold. They may, to be sure, be clothed too warmly, and be kept too much in a confined atmosphere; but these errors should be avoided, without committing the more common one of exposure to cold without sufficient clothing.

But this extreme carefulness as regards exposure to cold is necessary only for the first winter or two; after this, children should gradually be accustomed to the cold, though they should be warmly clad. Young females are too regardless of the importance of dressing warm in winter. They should wear flannel constantly in the cold season, and thick, warm stockings and shoes, and not change them for thin ones, to attend evening parties. The notion of hardening youth by exposure to cold in their clothing, is absurd and dangerous. The only sure way to protect ourselves from the evils of a cold climate, is to dress warm, sleep warm, together with exercise, and an abundance of invigorating food.

Above all, parents should be careful to have the dresses of children loose. I seldom see a young child, especially a girl, that is not dressed too tightly about the chest. No doubt many, very many, would escape consumption, and early death, were it not for the shocking practice of compressing the body by dress. Consumption is rare, very rare indeed, in persons with large, full chests. How fearful, therefore, should parents be, lest their own children are prevented from having such, by improper, though at present fashionable, dressing. The tight lacing of young ladies and adult females is unquestionably dangerous, and causes no doubt much disease, but not as much, I apprehend, as dressing children tightly about the chest. In early life, the ribs are easily compressed, and the chest made smaller. But not only should all such compression be avoided in childhood, but the dress should be quite loose, to permit the enlargement of the thorax, in laughing, running, and other exercises, and thus enable it to grow larger.

Many of the small, narrow chests we see in young ladies, are made so by this compression, which prevents the full expansion of the lungs, and an enlargement of the thorax. Some children, however, have small chests from birth, which predispose them to consumption, but I believe many of these might be remedied, by avoiding all compression of the chest when young, and encouraging them in those exercises that expand the lungs, and enlarge the breast.

Air, Exercise, and Amusements. If there is a place on earth where the air should be pure, it is the apartment of a young child. It not only should be kept free from dust, but from bad effluvia, and the air frequently be renovated. There is great neglect in this respect, both in nurseries and schools; a neglect which is one of the most frequent causes of scrofula, and is perhaps the reason why this disease prevails

more among females, who are less in the open air, than among males; in the proportion, it is said, of five to three. As I have said, children should be much of the time in the open air, when the weather is not severely cold. Instead of shutting them up in a small school-room, five or six hours every day, during the first years of life, and keeping them most of the time in one position, they should be permitted to spend most of their time out of doors; and parents should be more anxious to enlarge the muscles of their children, and expand their chests by exercise, than their minds by study. This is the proper course to adopt with all children, and absolutely essential to strengthen and invigorate those that are delicate, and predisposed to disease.

Let it not be objected to this course, that those with whom it is adopted will forever remain mentally inferior. This is not in fact true. A child that has not learned a letter, or been within a school-house, until after the age of six years, but has passed much of his time in healthful exercises out of doors, and thereby gained a healthy, vigorous body, will, when he has opportunity for learning, outstrip the pale, puny things that have been confined from infancy in schools, and become renowned for their proficiency in many sciences. And the former will continue to exhibit through life more mental as well as bodily energy and ability. Innumerable facts might be adduced to prove this state

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In regard to the early education of children, I am surprised that more inquiry has not been made respecting the early lives of those whom the world deservedly calls great, and the course adopted with them pursued with others. But in general, immediate results are alone regarded, and no inquiry is made respecting the ultimate effects upon the mind and body of the course adopted, but sufficient evidence of its utility is thought to be furnished, if thereby a child can be made to learn rapidly.

I apprehend if we inquire respecting the early education of most of those who have exhibited remarkable abilities, we shall find no sanction for confining young children closely to school: on the contrary, we probably should be induced to ask, if the exercise they enjoyed out of doors the idleness, as it is called by giving them good health, and developing their physical powers, had not in fact contributed to the ability afterward manifested, and enabled them to toil, and study, and perform great mental labor, without injury. Look at the great men of this and other countries. Can their greatness be attributed to early school education? Did they enjoy the advantages, as the phrase is, of infant-schools? Were they benefitted by the labors of the illustrious Peter Parley and Co.? No! Ninety-nine in a hundred had no carly school education, or none derived from the study of books, though they had the very best education in their early days; they were permitted to study men and things in the open air in the fields, and gardens, and woods, at play or labor; and thus the brain, instead of being prematurely tasked, and rendered like over-cultivated fields, incurably barren, was only equally exercised with the other parts of the system, and all were fully developed.

One of the most distinguished men of this country — distinguished alike for great and varied attainments, and for moral worth-favored me a few years since with the following interesting particulars of his early education :

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'I was brought up among the highlands, and hilly parts of Connecticut, and was never kept on the high pressure plan of instruction. It was not then the fashion. I went to school, and studied in the easy, careless way, until I went to college. I was daily and sometimes for a month or more engaged in juvenile play, and occasional efforts on the farm. I was roaming over the fields, and fishing, and sailing, and swimming, and riding, and playing ball, so as not to be but very superficially learned, when I entered college. I was not in college half the time. I was at home at leisure, or at gentle work, and much on horseback, but never in the least dissipated. I easily kept pace with my class, for it was in the midst of the American war, and there were no scholars, or much stimulus to learn. Silent leges inter arma. When I went to study law, I had my own leisure, and great exercise and relaxation in enchanting rides, and home visits, until I got to the bar. I lived plain-drank nothing but water-eat heartily of all plain, wholesome food that came in my way—was delighted with rural scenery, and active and healthy as I could be. Here I laid the basis of a sound constitution, in which my brain had not been unduly pressed or excited, and only kept its symmetry with the rest of the animal system. It was not until I was twenty-four, that I found I was very superficially taught, and then voluntarily betook myself to books, and to learn the classics, and every thing else I could read. The ardor and rapidity with which I pursued my law and literary course, was great and delightful, and my health and spirits were sound and uniform, and neither has faltered, down to this day."

Let not these valuable facts excuse or encourage idleness in literary pursuits. They but serve to show, that intense and constant application of mind in early life is not necessary to the highest intellectual attainments in after years; but that much exercise of the body is required in childhood, in order to develope and invigorate the system, and enable it subsequently to endure severe and long-continued mental application. And these are truths so much disregarded at the present time, and yet of such vast importance to the welfare of the rising generation, that reference to the early lives of distinguished men is not only excusable, but necessary.

The truths which such facts serve to establish, are also supported by physiology; and it is pleasing to see that they are beginning to be regarded in the education of young children. A few years since, there was scarcely a more alarming evil than the rage for making learned prodigies of infants and young children. But farther reform is necessary, especially as regards the education of females. While in no other country do females so generally receive good intellectual education, or spend as much time at school, as in this, their physical education is almost entirely disregarded. Hence the fact, noticed by all foreigners, that the females of this country, especially in our cities, appear more delicate and less healthy than in England. Hence the innumerable instances of narrow chests and curved spines, that a careful observer witnesses among the females of the large towns in this country.

CHANCELLOR KENT. This was written after reading a small volume presented to him in 1833, by the writer of this article, on the Influence of Mental Cultivation upon Health;' and was not intended for publication.

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