Popular Education. Ira Mayhew
to house, and imparting such information as may be particularly needed. The physician should not allow any of his employers blindly to disregard the laws of health, or, knowing them, to violate them unreproved. He should be accounted the best physician, other things being equal, whose employers have the least sickness, and uniformly enjoy the best health. When the relation existing between the members of the medical profession and the well-being of society generally comes to be better understood, and physicians are employed in accordance with the principles just stated, their greatest usefulness to the communities they serve will be found to consist in teaching well men and women how to retain and improve their health, and rear a healthy offspring, and not in partially curing diseased persons who are constantly violating the laws of health. These views will doubtless be new to many of my readers, and seem to them very strange! But let me inquire of such what they would think of the clergyman who should neglect to instruct his parishioners in the ennobling doctrines of morality and religion, and should suffer them to go on in sin unrebuked, until they become a burden to themselves? who should wait until his counsels were solicited before he sounds the note of alarm, and points the guilty sinner to "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world?" and who should confine his labors almost entirely to condemned criminals? Such conduct on the part of clergymen would doubtless be regarded by these very persons as passing strange! The course commonly pursued in the employment of physicians is equally unphilosophical, and floods society with a legion of evils—physical and intellectual, social and moral—three fourths of which might be avoided, by the proper exercise of the medical profession, in one generation; and ultimately, nineteen twentieths, if not ninety-nine one hundredths of them. As I have already said, this instruction would come, perhaps, most appropriately from the members of the medical profession. But if these things are not taught elsewhere, I repeat it, they should be taught—the elements of them at least—in our primary schools.
I can not better enforce the importance of physical education than by quoting from a lecture "on the education of the blind," by one of the most distinguished practical educators[2] in this country. "That the proportion of the blind to the whole population might be diminished by wise social regulations, and by the dissemination of knowledge of the organic laws of man, there is not a doubt; but whether the time has come, or ever will come, is another question. At any rate, to so enlightened a body[3] as I have the honor of addressing, suggestions of methods by which the extent of blindness may be limited will neither be misapplied, nor liable to offend a mawkish sensibility. That the blindness of a large proportion of society is a social evil will not be denied, nor will the right which society has to diminish that proportion be questioned. But how? in a very simple way; by preventing the transmission of an hereditary blindness to another generation; by preventing the marriage of those who are congenitally blind, or who have lost their sight by reason of hereditary weakness of the visual organs, which disqualifies them to resist the slightest inflammation or injury in childhood.
"I am aware that many people would condemn this proposition as cruel, because it might add to the sadness of the sufferers; and that the whole seven thousand five hundred blind in this country would rise up and scout it, as barbarous and unnatural; for I have experienced the effects of contradiction to the wills of individual blind persons in this respect. But my rule is, the good of the community before that of the individual; the good of the race before that of the community. To give you an instance: the city of Boston, with a population of eighty thousand, is represented in the Institution for the Blind by two blind children only; and I know of but four in the whole population; while Andover, with but five thousand, is fully and ably represented by seven;[4] and it has three more growing up.
"Now how is this? Why, the blind of Andover are mostly from a common stock; three of them are born of one mother, who has had four blind children. Another of the pupils is cousin, in the first degree, to these three; and two other pupils are cousins in a remote degree. Then, from other places, there are two brothers, who have a third at home. There is one blind girl, who has two blind sisters at home. Then there are two pairs of sisters.
"In the immediate vicinity of Boston, I know of a family in which blindness is hereditary; the last generation there were five. Of these five one is married, and has four children, not one of whom can see well enough to read; and if the others marry, they may increase the number to twelve or twenty.
"Now apply this state of things to the whole country, and have you any difficulty in conceiving how it happens that there are seven thousand five hundred blind in the United States? And can you doubt whether or not this great proportion of blind to the whole community might not be considerably diminished, if men and women understood the organic laws of their nature? understood that, very often, blindness is the punishment following an infringement of the natural laws of God; and if they could be made to act upon the holy Christian principles, that we should deny ourselves any individual gratification, any selfish desire, that may result in evil to the whole community?
"I would that every individual whom I have the honor to address would assist in the education of the blind, so far as to give them just and Christian views of this subject. I would that all should work for society; not for society to-day alone, but for the society of future ages; not in any one narrow, partial way, but upon a broad scale, and in every way in which they can be useful. If a person congenitally blind, or strongly predisposed to become so, or one who marries a person so born or so disposed, has blind offspring in consequence of it, I ask, is he not as responsible, in a moral point of view, for the infirmity of his children as though he had put out their eyes with his own hands?
"You may suppose, perhaps, that the infirmity of blindness would incapacitate sufferers from winning the affections of seeing persons; and that, with respect to two blind persons, the sense of incapacity to support a family would prevent them from uniting themselves. In the first place, I answer, that seeing people do no better than the blind. Even a blind man may perceive that many marriages are mere matters of course, resulting from juxtaposition of parties; and rarely matters where the purer affections and higher moral sentiments are consulted. And, in the second place, that incapacity of supporting a family will not weigh a feather in the balance with desire, unless the intellectual and moral nature is enlightened and cultivated. Do we not see, every day, cases of misery entailed upon whole families, because one of the parties had overlooked or disregarded moral infirmity, which ought to have been a greater objection than any physical defect—than even blindness or deafness?
"But no process of reasoning is required, for there stand the facts. The blind not only seek for partners in life, but are sometimes sought by seeing persons; and numerous instances have occurred within my knowledge. It is true, that despair of success in any other quarter, or an equally unworthy motive, may induce some to seek for partners among the blind, or the blind to unite with the blind; but still, there is the evil.
"My observation induces me to think that the blind, far more than seeing persons, are fond of social relations, and desirous of family endearments. A moment's thought would induce one to conclude that this would naturally be the case; a moment's observation convinces one that it is so. Now I have found among them some of the most pious, intelligent, and disinterested beings I ever knew; but hardly more than one who was prepared to forego the enjoyments of domestic relations. And how can we expect them to be so, more than seeing people? The fact is, but very few persons in the community give any attention to the laws of their organic nature, and the tendency to hereditary transmission of infirmities. Very few consider that they owe more to society than to their individual selves; that if we are to love our neighbor as ourself, we must, of course, love all our neighbors, collectively, more than the single unit which each one calls I.
"I would that considerations of this kind had more weight with the community generally. I would that the subject were more attended to, and that the violation of the laws of our organic nature were less frequent in our country. There is one great and crying evil in our system of education; it is, that but part of man's nature is educated, and that our colleges and schools doom young men for years to an uninterrupted and severe exercise of the intellectual faculties, to the comparative neglect of their moral, and still more of their physical nature. Nay, not only do they neglect their physical nature—they abuse it; they sin against themselves