The cramming processes which are resorted to in order to force children at fixed times from the lower to the higher grades of public schools, and more especially from grammar to normal or high schools, is a fruitful source of evil in this direction. It is not always so much hard study as it is the badly-arranged and too numerous subjects of study that make the strain. I have spoken of this in another connection as follows:[42] “Our children are too largely in the hands of those educationalists to whom Clouston refers,[43] who go on the theory that there is an unlimited capacity in every individual brain for education to any extent and in any direction. Children varying in age and original capacity, in previous preparation, and in home-surroundings are forced into the same moulds and grooves. The slow must keep pace with the fleet, the frail with the sturdy, the children of toil and deprivation with the sons and daughters of wealth and luxury. A child is always liable to suffer from mental overwork when the effort is made to force its education beyond its receptive powers. Education is not individualized enough. The mind of the child is often confused by a multitude of ill-assorted studies. Recreation is neglected and unhealthy emulation is too much cultivated. In many communities admissions to various grades of public schools are regulated entirely by the averages obtained at examinations, instead of on the general record of the pupils in connection with proper but not too severe examinations. In consequence often, after the campaign of overwork and confusion called an examination, we see children developing serious disturbances of health or even organic disease—paroxysmal fever, loss of appetite, headache or neckache, disturbed sleep, temporary albuminuria, chorea, hysteria, and hystero-epilepsy.” [Footnote 42: “Toner Lecture on Mental Overwork and Premature Disease among Public and Professional Men.” delivered March 19, 1884, Washington, Smithsonian Inst., January, 1885.] [Footnote 43: _Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases_.]