If any subject does not invoke power and improve health it is not worth learning. But nearly all school subjects may do this. To take the common R's and writing: to learn these in the right way is as healthy an exercise as skipping or running. It is to exercise the lungs, the lips, the vocal organs, the eyes, the hands, and arms aright. It is to discover (if there be anything wrong) the risk or mischief, and be warned. Health is a by-product of right learning, and good teaching is founded on physiology.
There is, then, a Hygiene of Instruction, and to develop it as a science will be the ultimate task of the school doctor.
This little book attempts a threefold task. Its first aim is to make clear what the immediate task of the school doctor is.
Its second to show the trend of the only continuous education the race has received (that is to say, the trend of education through work and experience).
And last of all, having a glimpse of what has been done by the artizan, and what is being attempted already by the school doctor in this and other lands, we shall try to indicate the probable line of advance.
