Physiology in our public schools / By Albert Leffingwell.
- Albert Leffingwell
- Date:
- [between 1900 and 1999?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Physiology in our public schools / By Albert Leffingwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![creepiiiij into ronscio>isne.^s a racjiie^ alniormaJ^ honihji' sense of suds- faction at the sight of this qnireriitg fcsh^ yet ruddy with the warm l»lood of oiit-ooue life. AVliieh are the pupils that experience this arousing emotion? AVill they confess it to you? Not at all. Yet they may be nearest and dearest to you l)y every human tie ! It is j'ou who have put them to a danger from v>'hicli tliey sliould liave been spared. You have aroused within them a sensation that is oftentimes the very mother of every cruelty. For out of this awakened sensation of abnormal pleasure at the sight of blood is born the instinct of murder, and the lowest tendencies of viciousness and crime. There is yet another aspect of these methods of instruction— their influence upon all children who are entirely normal, but yet exceedingly sensitive to impressions. I do not hesitate to sa}'^ that nothing such a child will learn by these lessons can ever compensate for the deleterious impression it may receive by the needless sacri- fice of Life in its presence. .Say what we will, there is a kind of moral deterioration inseparable from the act of killing anything which is doing us no harm. To put out of existence a noxious animal or insect is to obey the instinct of self-preservation ; but to take a perfectly harmless creature, kin to the pet of many a child, and to deprive it of ^'hatever joys come from living — simply that children may see how curiously Nature has constructed it —can hardly fail to give them a sense of wrongful complicity with deprivation of another's rights. Not long since I was talking with a young girl graduate of che principal female college in this country, and although she was greatly interested in the study of biology, she told me that a most distasteful impression was created among the girl- stu<lent8 by the fact that so many rabbits were killed to demonstrate wliat the sacrifice of a single life would have done equally well. Is it wise to blunt this sensibility regarding the sacredness of life? I am not referring to the psychopathic child, but to all children alike. There will come a time when, as young men and women, they should know how to prevent pain, by causing the ])ainless termination of life; but for childhood, that lesson should be unlearned, and as far as pos8i])le delayed. The lieauty, the grace, the excellence of all harm- less living things is the lesson for children, rather than precocious intimacy with the mystery of Death. Then too, there is yet another danger. Tlu; desire, the ambi- tion to imildif. is one of the first instincts of conscious life. J ques- tion whether there was ever experiment in class-room that some child or children did not try to imitate it in private or by themselves. Suppose it is merely a dissection of a rabbit just killed. Some child or ciiildren will wish to rcp<'a1 it —//'/ //// tlw rahhif /hcinsr/ves. C-i )](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21215091_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
