strongly recommended, and the initiation of which presents moreover much more serious difficulties.

In fact there is nothing easier than to impose upon children daily exercises of training, nothing seems more difficult than to diminish the lessons.

Intellectual contest is now the commonest form of the struggle for existence, and if a child, letting his brain rest, demand from it merely moderate exertion, he risks being beaten in the race by rivals who are more regardful of success in the struggle than of the laws of hygiene.

Is it then possible to apply the remedy pointed out by the Academy as an urgent necessity, without first making the reform on which it does not so strongly insist? Are we to increase the muscular exercise of the children even in cases in which we have not yet "simplified the course of study"? Will it be advantageous, finally, to make children, who are suffering from excessive mental fatigue, perform a "daily regimen of physical training"?

The academic report has not foreseen this question, and here is an unfortunate want. It is not an indifferent matter whether the two reforms suggested are mutually indispensable, and whether the prescriptions recommending exercises of strength and skill are addressed merely to children who lead too sedentary a life, or if they also apply to those children who do an excessive amount of mental work. An explicit commentary was so much the more needed, because already the general opinion, in advance of the decision of the judges, had pronounced in favour of the application of gymnastic exercises of all kinds in the treatment of mental overwork. All those who have appreciated the beneficial effects usually produced by physical exercise, seem impatient to see, while waiting for other reforms, gymnastic teaching take a larger place in educational establish

ments.

If we believe what most people say, bodily exercises will have a double effect, and will extend their benefits to the wearied mind of the child as well as to his en

feebled body. Muscular exercise will be a salutary counterpoise, able to re-establish the balance of the system which has been upset by excessive mental effort.

The physiological effects of the most common bodily exercises are still but little known, for they are seldom practised by men who study, and very few doctors have had the opportunity of verifying on themselves the most interesting results. Amongst the effects there are many which are purely subjective—a certain phenomena of fatigue, for instance-and the shades of which, very characteristic to those who have experienced them, may remain a dead letter to the ordinary observer in whom they have never occurred.

Thus, doubtless, is to be explained this widely circulated error, accepted without examination by most unscientific persons, and even by some doctors, who attribute to physical exercise the office of a derivative from mental fatigue.

Muscular exercise can assuredly remedy the faults of scholastic education which consist in an excessive sedentary life, but it is not a remedy applicable to mental overwork. There is, we believe, between the measures necessary in the treatment of these two faults of education a kind of antagonism and contradiction, which makes the solution of the problem a very delicate one.

We have at the same time to give work to the inactive muscles of the child, and repose to his overtaxed brain.

Now we hope to show that in certain exercises which the Academy recommends, in "the regular and prescribed movements, in gymnastics with apparatus, and in fencing," the intellectual faculties are occupied, and the brain has to work just as much as the muscles.

If then it is proved that a child is suffering from mental overwork, how can we dream of prescribing these exercises for him?

But if the too sedentary life of the scholar imperiously needs an increased amount of bodily work, and if we cannot hope, in order to increase the time for exercise,

*

to diminish the hours of study, we must at least adopt, amongst the various ways of exercising the body, those which need least the association of the brain in the muscular work.

No one has at present attempted to examine from such a standpoint whether it is necessary to exercise discrimination in choice in this matter. No one has asked if the gymnastic methods so much in honour in these days, are those most capable of giving to the muscles of the child the desired activity, without imposing fresh fatigue on his already overworked brain.

The object of the following chapters will be to establish, on a physiological basis, the rules which must guide us in the choice of an exercise, when we have to deal with a person whose life is too sedentary, and who is exhausted by continuous mental toil.

* M. Edouard Maneuvrier in his remarkable work on Éducation de la Bourgeoisie," L. Cerf, 1888, proposes a complete plan of scholastic reform, according to which it will be possible to reduce to six hours the daily work of the child.

How many years shall we have to wait before so urgently needed a reform is put in practice?

CHAPTER II.

MENTAL WORK AND PHYSICAL EXERCISE.

The Muscle which Works and the Brain which Thinks-Similarity of the Physiological Phenomena-Heating of the Brain-Experiments of Dr. Lombard-Flow of Blood to the Brain during Mental Exertion-The Balance of Mosso-The consequences of Work of the Mental and of the Physical Order-Combustions and Products of Dissimilation-Auto-Intoxications through Overwork. Similarity of effects in the Physical and in the Psychical Order-Effects of Brain Work on the Composition of the Urine; they are Identical with those of Muscular Work-An Attack of Gout following Mental Fatigue like one following Physical Fatigue-The Case of Sydenham.

I.

LEAVING all philosophical doctrines on one side, and moreover without any need for committing ourselves to the materialistic hypothesis, we can show that there are very close analogies between mental work and physical exercise. These are two modes of the manifestation of vital energy which are very different in their form, but subject to the same physiological laws.

The conditions of work are the same for the brain which thinks and for the muscle which contracts: in both of these organs, when their activity comes into play, we observe a considerable increase in the bloodsupply, and a greater production of heat.

If we measure a limb which has just been performing violent exercise we ascertain that there is a considerable increase in its size. This is because its vessels are distended by an increased quantity of blood.

It has even been noticed that the brain, when at work, becomes the seat of a more considerable flow of blood. Some physiologists have had an opportunity of studying

the circulation of the blood in the cerebral vessels of patients in whom a portion of the skull had been removed by injury. Through this species of window to the organ of thought they have been able to see the brain swell with blood whenever mental work was performed, and the congestion disappear as soon as the intellectual effort was over.

An ingenious experiment has even made it possible to determine in a very striking manner that the quantity of blood drawn to the brain by mental work is more or less abundant according to the greater or less intensity of the intellectual effort. Mosso, an Italian physiologist, has constructed a balance on which a man can lie at full length. When a man is the subject of experiment the apparatus is so counterpoised that the part which supports the head and that which supports the feet are in exactly the same horizontal plane. The sensibility of the balance is sufficiently acute for a very light weight, added to one side or the other, to destroy its equilibrium. If the person under observation lies down perfectly motionless, and in absolute mental repose, the two extremities of the balance remain at exactly the same level. But if his mind becomes occupied with ideas needing an effort of attention, if an endeavour is made to solve a difficult problem, if a call is made on the memory or the judgment; if in short the active psychical faculties come into play, the equilibrium of the balance is immediately destroyed, and the end which supports the head sinks.

The blood flows in more abundance through the cerebral vessels by the very fact of mental effort; the brain suddenly becomes heavier, and this increase in weight gives the exact measure of the increase in bloodsupply. We may in this manner determine that the lowering of the head is more marked according as the psychical faculties are more strained.

There is another analogy which is no less striking, between the work of the brain and that of the muscles. In both these organs greater activity of function is accompanied by greater production of heat.