Home lessons after school hours / by Sir Joseph Fayrer.

  • Joseph Fayrer
Date:
[1884]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Home lessons after school hours / by Sir Joseph Fayrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It would be impossible in the short space of time at my disposal to state all the anatomical and physiological arguments in support of the proposition, nor is it necessary. It is sufficient to say that this is based on the intimate co-relations subsisting between nutrition and growth of the body and brain and intellectual development. The neces- sary conditions for the well being of the body are, we know, pure air and water, appropriate food, with due in- tervals of rest, and such exercise of the various parts and organs as to fit them for the due performance of their functions; so it is with the brain and nervous system generally, and a brain, however gifted or powerful it may be potentially, will fail, unless the conditions of healthy physical life be observed. It is to be remembered also, that during the rapid growth of infancy over-exercise of the cerebral functions, by creating a greater demand for in- creased blood supply, tends to interfere with the due nutrition of the body and to entail disease. It has been observed that during sudden and rapid growth in young persons the brain power has been diminished to a state of apathy or even of abeyance, whilst on the other hand it has been remarked that the lethargy, the clouding or weakening of mental energy, in such young persons has cleared away as the growing fit has ceased, and the general vigour of body been re-established. Needless to insist upon the great care and discretion with which young brains should be worked at these critical periods. Let me, for the benefit of non-medical hearers, mention one or two anatomical facts which have an important bearing on these questions. The brain of a child at birth weighs about twelve ounces ; it grows so rapidly, that by the age of three years it has attained to three quarters of the full weight. It continues to increase rapidly till about the seventh year, when it has attained to nine-tenths of its complete weight. Thence on to twenty it still increases, though slowly, and again slower still it grows, till it attains the full measure of its size and power at from thirty to forty years of age. Brains vary in different individuals in
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