The Story of our Health Message

Physiology in the Schools

Through the labors and influence of the foregoing and other reformers during the first half of the nineteenth century, a broad foundation was laid for a program of education in health principles. The introduction of the teaching of physiology in the public schools was one of the issues on which a long but finally successful fight was waged. In 1850 some progress was made when the legislature of Massachusetts passed a law providing for the teaching of physiology and hygiene in the public schools “in all cases in which the school committee shall deem it expedient.” Provision was also made for all teachers thereafter to be examined “in their knowledge of the elementary principles of physiology and hygiene, and their ability to give instruction in the same.” SHM 47.1

The following year, however, the Committee on Education of that state was divided over the question of the purchase of the necessary anatomical diagrams for the use of common schools. After a lengthy argument the majority decided against it, expressing “doubts whether, out of 3,748 public school teachers, a hundred teachers can be found qualified to teach physiology,” and urging that this subject give way to others “having a stronger demand upon the attention.” SHM 47.2

A minority of the committee made an eloquent and logical statement in protest against the decision of the majority in this matter. They made a plea for putting the study of physiology in the very forefront of the educational curriculum. SHM 47.3

In their unsuccessful attempt to influence public opinion before it was ready for such a progressive move, they declared that the education of children was “commenced wrong, continued wrong, and ended wrong.” The religious training was deemed of prime importance, then the moral, the intellectual, and lastly the physical. They urged the complete reversal of this order of instruction, asserting that the teaching of the mechanism of their bodies would be far more effectual in directing the young minds to the Creator than would “arguments on the questionable necessity of infantile regeneration.” SHM 48.1

“Rather let the mind remain a blank,” they contended, “than make it a dyspeptic by prematurely feeding it with unintelligible dogmas. To educate the mind regardless of the body is like building a house without a foundation.”—“Physiology in Schools—Progress of Public Sentiment,” an editorial appearing in The Water Cure Journal, June, 1851. SHM 48.2