WATER OW THE BRAIN. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "
SPECTATOR:] SI/V-34 attention has been called to a paragraph in your issue of May 24th, in which you refer to some statements of mine re- garding the increase among children of deaths from water on the brain, and also to the increase of deaths from inflamma- tion of the brain. The statements referred to formed the sub- ject of a correspondence with Mr. Mundella, which has con- siderable public interest. First of all, I should like to point out that the statement regarding the increased fatality of inflam- mation of the brain referred to the whole population, and not to children of school age, or any other. The argument I founded on the fact that there has been an increase in the mortality from this cause of death among the general population amounting to nearly 50 per cent. was this. As causes quite apart from educa- tion are leading to an increased mortality from nervous diseases, our educators, I argued, ought to be most careful that they do not aggravate this tendency by educational pressure. In fact, I think you will agree with me that we may fairly go further, and ask our educators to so arrange education as that it shall tend to counteract and diminish this tendency. That they should 80 act as not to increase it is not enough.
Now, as to the first statement, about the increase of mortality from water on the brain among children. I chose my statement so as to be telling. It is quite true, but not the whole truth. The Education Department has shown that, comparing the ten years 1861-70 with 1870-80, the following general result appears (I quote from the statement of Dr. Ogle) :—" While the mortality of children from all causes and from zymotic causes has considerably diminished, their mortality from dis- eases of the nervous system has exceptionally remained station- ary. The general improvement has not affected this class of diseases." Indeed, Dr. Ogle shows that the mortality of children from nervous diseases shows a very small increase, if measured by a second plan of decimals, in 1870-80 as compared with 1861-70. This seems to me a very important fact, since the question at once arises,—What is the reason that this cause of mortality shows a minute increase among children of school age, while that from other causes has diminished considerably P Is that cause educational over-pressure ?
In order to answer this question, I should like to direct your attention to the following figures from a paper which I read at Leicester on April 16th to the National Union of Elementary- School Teachers. I then showed that though the whole mor- tality of children under fifteen years of age from nervous diseases had not increased, its incidence had materially altered. Com- paring the three 'years 1868-9-70 (before the Act) with 1879- 80.81 (after the Education Act came into operation), and divid- ing the mortality under five years of age from that between five and fifteen years, I showed this :—In 1868-9-70, the ratio of deaths under five years was to the deaths from five to fifteen years as 12.5 to 1; but in 1879-80-81, the ratio was 107 to 1. "In other words, if we take 535 deaths of children under fifteen years of age in the two periods and compare them, we shall find that in the three years ending 1870, forty- three of them were between five and fifteen years of age ; but in the three years ending 1881, fifty were between those ages. The ratio of deaths at school ages is about one- sixth greater in the latter period than in the earlier." Now, it seems to me, from all these considerations, that the conclusion is inevitable that the working of the Education Act has had some-
thing to do with this result. First, it is shown that the mortality from all causes and from zymotic causes has much diminished. Second, that from nervous diseases has not diminished (has, in fact, very slightly increased). Third, under five years of age the mortality, even from nervous diseases, has diminished in proportion to the population (it has even diminished absolutely) ; but that from five to fifteen years of age has considerably increased.
I think these considerations also dispose of your question,— " Should not the statistician," you say, "show that the pro- portion of children growing up to maturity has itself dimin- ished, in order to establish the case of the over-pressure agitators P" I have shown that children have a much better chance up to five years of age, when they come under the Public Education Act, and that then their mortality begins to increase. What more probable than that their education has something to do with this P In Bradford the medical men asked the School Board to abolish compulsory home-lessons in the case of children under ten years of age,—a request the
Board, have not seen fit to grant ; but it seems to me that the- evidence that it would have been wiser had they done so is very. strong.
Kindly permit me to add that I always have been an advo-- cate of compulsory education, that I am so still, and that I believe, as I said at Leicester, that, ". on the whole, Mr. Forster's Act was a piece of beneficent and necessary legislation." Even good things, however, may be unwisely pressed, and I believe, for the reasons I have given, that our national system of educa- tion is being unduly pressed.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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