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maintain her high qualities unimpaired through life, would, as a mother, be a treasure of the highest value.

For many years, the lives of children depend almost exclusively on the care of the mother. Young women, therefore, should be taught not only how to regulate their own habits, so that they may preserve their health and vigour, but also how to treat children, both as physical and mental beings. This information would be attended with great advantages, whether they subsequently discharged maternal duties or not. The very study of the structure, functions, and proper treatment of children, with the view of exercising the kindly affections towards them, would be delightful in itself; and the young students, if they did not become mothers, would at least be sisters, aunts, or friends, and could never want opportunities to practise their knowledge. Information of this description is not neglected by women with impunity. It appears by the London bills of mortality, that between a fourth and a fifth of all the children baptized, die within the first two years. There is no example among the more perfect of the lower animals, of such a vast mortality of the young, where external violence is withheld; so that woman, with reason, and morality, and religion as her gifts, makes a poor figure in her maternal character, contrasted with the inferior creatures acting under the guidance of instinct alone. Much of this mortality arises from imperfect health in the parents, so that the children are born with feeble constitutions; but much is also directly owing to injudicious treatment after birth.

One important branch of female instruction, therefore, ought to be, the treatment of children as physical beings. Lectures should be instituted to communicate this information, and the basis of it ought to be anatomy and physiology.* The minutiae of these sciences need not be treated of, but the leading organs and their uses, on which health

"It is to the deplorable ignorance, even of persons of education, with respect to the structure and functions of the human body, and everything which relates to health and disease, that we must ascribe the inability of such persons to distinguish between the rational practitioner and the quack. The higher classes, especially, hold regular physic and physicians of small account. Their idea of medicine is, that it is an art, a craft, a kind of knack (to use a somewhat inelegant but not inexpressive word), which some people are born with, or attain without study, and by the mere felicity of nature. If anatomy and physiology formed part of a good education, physic would reach its proper rank. But those who hang with ecstacy over stamens and pistils, or fragments of granite and spar, never seem to consider how noble and useful a subject for contemplation exists in their own frames."-Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxiii., p. 119.

and mental activity depend, should be explained. The human figure may also be advantageously studied in statuary and painting, not only as an interesting object of taste, but as a source of useful practical information. A mother whose eye was familiar with the proportions of the vital organs most conducive to health, would watch with increased attention and intelligence, the progress of the nutrition of her children, and their habits and postures. The tumescent abdomen, the flat and narrow chest, the slender limbs, the large head, and the curving legs and spine, would become perceptible to her practised eye, months before they would arrest the attention of an uninstructed and unreflecting woman; and on these months, when disease was still only in its incipient stage, might depend the life of her cherished offspring. It is a great error to suppose that these studies are necessarily shocking and indelicate. They are so only in the eyes of ignorance and prejudice. Indelicate descriptions of abuses of the bodily functions are highly objectionable; and the enemies of knowledge have represented this to be the instruction which I recommend. Nothing can be more unlike it. The Creator has constituted every organ of the body, and, in studying its structure and uses, we are contemplating his workmanship. There is no inherent indelicacy in the human figure. It is the temple of the mind, and its Author has impressed on it a beauty of form and an elegance of proportion, that render it capable of exciting the most pure and refined impressions in cultivated and virtuous minds. Where indelicacy is felt, its source must be looked for-not in the object, but in licentious feelings, or in a perverted and neglected education in the spectator. That individual who is able to associate only impure ideas with the most exquisite specimens of the fine arts, resembles a man in whom the aspect of a rich and beautiful domain should excite only feelings of envy, cupidity, and discontent. To call the human figure indelicate, is to libel Eternal Wisdom.

The Creator has taught the inferior creatures to rear their young successfully by instinct; but he has not conferred this guide on the human mother. One of two conclusions, therefore, appears to follow. He has intended either that she should use her faculties of observation and reflection, in acquiring all the knowledge requisite for the proper treatment of offspring, or that she should recklessly allow a large proportion of them to perish. One or other of these conclusions is really inevitable; because, as He has denied her instinct, and as she cannot obtain knowledge to supply its place, without application of her intellect to the study of the laws of na

ture, which instinct prompts the lower creatures to obey without knowing them,-the Creator must have intended either that she should study these laws, or give up her offspring in vast numbers to destruction. The latter result actually happens, to the enormous extent just mentioned; and, if it be the necessary consequence of the Creator's gift of reason, in place of instinct, to woman, I submit to condemnation; but if it be the natural effect of her not having employed that reason in a proper direction, I say that He has commanded her to study His works. If this conclusion be just, we may rest assured that she may safely, and in perfect consistency with feminine delicacy, study the Creator's designs, power, and goodness, in the structure, functions, and adaptations of the human body; and that she will not find her higher faculties outraged, but exalted and refined, by the knowledge which will thus be revealed.*

It has been said, that it is better to call in the aid of a physician, than to study medicine for one's self. But I do not propose that young persons in general should study medicine. My recommendation is simply, that they should be taught the structure and functions of the body with a view to preserving their health, to fit them to judge when it is proper that medical advice should be obtained, and to enable them to act like rational patients in the hands of a skilful physician, when they are so unfortunate as to fall into disease. Every medical practitioner of a humane and honest mind, laments the unnecessary suffering and expense to which he sees his patients exposed through lack of this information. The publication and sale of such works as Dr Macaulay's "Popular Medical Dictionary," shew pretty clearly that my views on this subject are by no means singular.†

It may be imagined, that rules for the preservation of health may be taught without anatomy being studied. But all such instruction is empirical. The authority of any rule. of health is the fact, that Nature is constituted in such and such a manner, and will act in her own way, whether attended to or not-for good if obeyed, and for evil if opposed. This authority is rarely comprehended without instruction concerning the foundation on which it rests. The rule, other

*The public has strikingly responded to the views stated in the text, as is evinced by the extensive sales of the works by Dr A. Combe, "On the Physical and Moral Management of Infancy," and "Physiology applied to Health and Education," and of similar works by other authors.

Since these lectures were delivered and published in 1833, the advice given in the text has been extensively acted on, in teaching Physiology to both sexes, by public lectures, and with the happiest effects,

wise, resides in the memory rather than in the understanding; and the possessor has no power of modifying her conduct, and adapting it judiciously to new circumstances. She knows the rule only, and is at a loss whenever any exception or new combination not included in it, presents itself. The Professor of Scots Law most acutely and judiciously directed his students, when reading about the law of title-deeds, to take the parchments themselves into their hands, and to look at them, assuring them that familiarity with their mere physical appearance, would aid the memory and judgment in becoming acquainted with the doctrines relative to their effects. Philosophy and experience equally confirm the soundness of this observation; and it applies, in an especial manner, to rules relative to health. When a good description of the respiratory organs, illustrated by prepared specimens or good drawings, has been given to a young woman, she understands much better, feels more deeply, and remembers much longer and more clearly, the dangerous consequences of exposing the throat and breast to a stream of cold air or to a sudden change of temperature, than when she has only heard or read precepts to avoid these and similar practical errors.

Another leading branch of female education should be that kind of knowledge which will fit a woman to direct successfully the moral and intellectual culture of her children. This embraces a vast field of useful and interesting information. If we should ask any mother, who has not studied mental philosophy, to write out a catalogue of the desires, emotions, and intellectual powers, which she conceives her children to be endowed with; to describe the particular objects of each faculty, its proper sphere of action, the abuses into which it is most prone to fall, and also the best method of directing each to its legitimate objects, within its just sphere, so as best to avoid hurtful aberrations, we know well that she could not execute such a task. I entreat any lady, who has a family, and who has derived no aid from mental philosophy, to make the experiment for her own satisfaction. She will discover in her own mind a vast field of ignorance, of which, before making trial, she could not have conjectured the extent.

The earnest study of Phrenology, or, in other words, of the primitive faculties and their scope of action, should form an indispensable step in practical education. There are few mothers who do not sometimes discover wayward feelings, particular biases, or alarming tendencies breaking out in their children in some instances when they least expect them; and I appeal to their own consciousness, whether they have not, in alarm and bewilderment, wondered what these could be, and

lamented their own inability to comprehend or to guide them. Mothers who have experienced this darkness, and have subsequently studied Phrenology, have appreciated the value and importance of the light which it has shed on their practical duties. While this edition is in the press, a talented mother of a talented son writes to me thus: "There has ever been, during the past years since my son's babyhood, a shadow in my mind that something more tangible than what is usually thought sufficient to guide young men, ought to exist somewhere, although I was ignorant equally of what that was, and where and to whom I should apply to obtain it. The works on Phrenology and its applications are fast investing my shadow with a body."

I am not pleading the cause of Phrenology for the sake of making proselytes. My proposition is general, that a mother cannot train faculties without knowing their nature, objects, and spheres of activity; and if any woman can find practical information on these points without the aid of Phrenology, I earnestly recommend her to seek it out and apply it. To Phrenology I owe the views of human nature and its capabilities, which have most benefited and delighted my own mind; but I am far from pressing it on others, who prefer to consider the mind as if it had no known connection with organization. If nature has connected it with organs, such individuals will meet with their reward in disappointment.

Let us now suppose a mother to be instructed concerning the physical constitution and mental faculties of her children; she will find it expedient next to become acquainted with the objects in the external world to which these faculties are related. We are told that it is a " delightful task to rear the tender thought, and teach the young idea how to shoot." The power of doing so seems to imply some knowledge in the teacher of the direction in which the mind will tend to shoot, and of the objects which it will desire to reach; in other words, such acquaintance with the external world as will enable the mother to excite the moral sentiments and intellect of the child, and operate on the happiness of the future man or woman. In female training, the communication of this knowledge is too much neglected. It implies the study of the elements of Chemistry, Natural History, and Natural Philosophy, as well as familiar acquaintance with the social institutions of our own country, and the civil history of nations.* If an ill-informed mother have an acute and clever

*Since the first edition of these lectures was published, several successful institutions have been formed to remedy these defects in female education.

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