The Young Mother: Management of Children in Regard to HealthAlcott, William A. (William Andrus)
Science
The Young Mother: Management of Children in Regard to Health
Alcott, William A. (William Andrus)
Children -- Health and hygiene
The blind at the Institution in this city, as well as in other similar
institutions, are now taught to read and write with considerable
facility. But how? Most of my readers may have heard how they read, but
I will describe the process as well as I can. A description of their
method of writing is more difficult.
The letters are formed by pressing the paper, while quite moist, upon
rather large type, which raises a ridge in the line of every letter, and
which remains prominent after the paper is dry. In order to read, the
pupil has to feel out these ridges. A circular ridge on the paper he is
told is O; a perpendicular one, I; a crooked one, S; &c. They read music
and arithmetic printed in a similar manner. A few months of practice, in
this way, will enable an ingenious youth to read with considerable ease
and despatch.
Now if nothing is wanting but a little training to render the touch so
accurate, would it not be useful to train every child to judge
frequently of the properties of bodies by this sense? And cannot every
one recall to his mind a thousand situations in which a greater accuracy
of this sense would have saved him much inconvenience, as well as
afforded him no little pleasure?
I shall conclude this section with a few remarks on the HAND. The custom
of neglecting, or almost neglecting the left hand, though nearly
universal, in this country at least, appears to me to be
wrong--decidedly so. For although more blood may be sent to the right
arm than to the left, as physiologists say, yet the difference is not as
great at birth as it is afterward; so that education either weakens the
one or strengthens the other.
Besides this, we occasionally find a person who is left-handed, as it is
called; that is, his left hand and arm are as much larger and stronger
than the right, as the right is usually stronger than the left. How is
this? Do we find a corresponding change in the internal structure? But
suppose it could be ascertained that such a change did exist, which I
believe has never been done, the question would still arise whether the
difference was the same at birth, or whether the more frequent use of
the left hand has not, in part, produced it.
I do not mean, here, to intimate that a more frequent use of the left
hand than the right would make new blood-vessels grow where there were
none before. But it would certainly do one thing; it would make the same
vessels carry more blood than they did before, which is, in effect,
nearly the same thing:--for the more blood in the limb, as a general
rule, the more strength--provided the limb is in due health and
exercise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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