The above evidence is confirmed by Mr. Toynbee:—
“The disease of hydrocephalus, of water in the brain, so fatal to children, I find associated with symptoms of scrofula, and arising in abundance in these close rooms. I believe water in the brain, in the class of patients whom I visit, to be almost wholly a scrofulous affection.” { 116b}
But supposing people aware of the necessity for good air, and therefore for ventilation, what is to be done? In houses in great towns certainly, and I should say in all houses, some of the care and expense that are devoted to ornamental work, which when done is often a care, a trouble, an eyesore, and a mischief, should be given to modes of ventilation, { 117a} sound building, abundant access of light, largeness of sleeping-rooms, and such useful things. Less ormolu and tinsel of all kinds in the drawing-rooms, and sweeter air in the regions above. Similar things may be done for and by the poor. { 117b} And it need hardly be said that those people who care for their children, if of any enlightenment at all, will care greatly for the sanitary condition of their neighbourhood generally. At present you will find at many a rich man’s door { 117c} a nuisance which is poisoning the atmosphere that his children are to breathe, but which he could entirely cure for less than one day’s ordinary expenses.
I am afraid that ventilation is very little attended to in school-rooms, either for rich or poor. Now it may be deliberately said that there is very little learned in any school-room that can compensate for the mischief of its being learned in the midst of impure air. This is a thing which parents must look to, for the grown-up people in the school-rooms, though suffering grievously themselves from insufficient ventilation, will be unobservant of it. { 118} In every system of government inspection, ventilation must occupy a prominent part.
The advantage of simple food for children is a thing that people have found out. And as regards exercise, children happily make great efforts to provide a sufficiency of this for themselves. In clothing, the folly and conformity of grown-up people enter again. Loving mothers, in various parts of the world, carry about at present, I believe, and certainly in times past, carried their little children strapped to a board, with nearly as little power of motion as the board itself. Could we get the returns of stunted miserable beings, or of deaths, from this cause, they would be something portentous. Less in degree, but not less fatally absurd in principle, are many of the strappings, bandages, and incipient stays for children amongst us. They are all mischievous. Allow children, at any rate, some freedom of limbs, some opportunity of being graceful and healthy. Give Nature—dear motherly, much-abused Nature—some chance of forming these little ones according to the beneficent intentions of Providence, and not according to the angular designs of ill-educated men and women.
