Two lectures on the conditions of health and wealth educationally considered / by W.B. Hodgson.

  • Hodgson, W. B. (William Ballantyne), 1815-1880.
Date:
1860
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two lectures on the conditions of health and wealth educationally considered / by W.B. Hodgson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    double benefit and pleasure in half the time, and with half the toil; but in acquiring what it so vitally imports that all should know, and what the youthful mind appropriates as easily as does the body its fitting food.* The nextquestion, “Howisthis instruction to be best given?’' is the meeting-point of the two tendencies of which I spoke at the outset,—the adaptive and the expansive. At this point the two desiderata meet and blend. A useful subject may be taught in an unintellectual, unimproving, even a narrowing way. But all subjects, by being so robbed of their inner use, lose much of their outer also. This is especially true of the subject now in question. It will scarcely confer much sanitary advantage if not so taught as to yield its proper mental fruit. As regards even the former, it is vain to issue arbitrary pre- cepts, however just, about air and exercise, and temperance, and so forth ;-j- to commit to memory verbal directions, how- ever sound. Such an educational edifice is built on sand, and the first and slightest blast of temptation will overthrow * “ I remember bearing a distinguished man, who was suffering under physical weak- ness, say, that when he was a boy he was instructed concerning the solar system, and every other system, except his own system !”— R. C. Waterston, Thoughts on Moral and Spiritual Culture, 1843, Introd., p. 9. t The Rev. Sidney Smith says to his parishioners : “ Never sit in wet clothes. Off with them as soon as you can ; no constitution can stand it. Look at Jackson, who lives next door to the blacksmith, he was the strongest man in the parish. Twenty different times I warned him of his folly in wearing wet clothes. He pulled off his hat and smiled, and was very civil, but clearly seemed to think it was all old women’s nonsense. He is now, as you all see, bent double with rheumatism, is living upon parish allowance, and is scarcely able to crawl from pillar to post.”—Memoir, vol. i. p. 338. But why should the warnings which so signally failed with Jackson succeed better with others? Jackson's example, doubtless, was worth something; but even that, I fear, would not suffice. Well does Mr. G. II. Lewes say; “ No scientific subject can be so important to man as that of his own life. No knowledge can be so incessantly appealed to by the incidents of every day, as the knowledge of the processes bp which he lives and acts. At every moment he is in danger of disobeying laws which, when disobeyed, may bring years of suffering, decline of powers, premature decay. Sanitary reformers preach in vain, because they preach to a public which does not understand the laws of life—laws as rigorous as those of gravitation or motion. Even the sad experience of others yields us no lessons, unless we understand the principles involved. If one man is seen to suffer from vitiated air, another is seen to endure it without apparent harm ; a third concludes that ‘ it is all chance,’ and trusts to that chance : had he understood tho prin- ciple involved, he would not have been left to chance—his first lesson in swimming would not havo been a shipwreck.—Prospectus of the Physiology of Common Life, 2 vols. 1859. To the same effect says Mr. Arthur Helps : “ Suppose there were the simplest know- ledge with respect to air and water universal amongst mankind; how easy then, com- paratively speaking, would be the work of sanitary reform ! But now the difficulties of addressing the world upon any such subject are great; because, what is certain and ele- mentary to ono class, is far advanced, hard to understand, and seemingly problematical, when addressed to another.”—Friends in Council. N. S. 1859. Vol. ii. p. 152, c. vii.