Very many cases of fevers can be directly traced to some local cause,
which should receive as much attention from the physician as does the
patient, and either the one or the other promptly removed. Indeed,
people must learn for themselves to investigate the laws regulating
health, and thus be able, without the aid of any professional, to decide
intelligently all of the more obvious questions.

It does, in this connection, seem that there is great want of judgment
on the part of those having the direction of our public schools, in that
there is so trifling attention given both the study and observance of
the laws which control our existence. What is education without a sound
body? what is life to the creature of broken health? and what is there
which is more valuable and priceless to us? The answer is plain to all,
and yet the whole advancing generation of boys and girls, beyond a mere
inkling in physiology, a possible recollection of the number of bones in
the human frame, and that common air is composed of two principal gases,
they know of hygienic law practically nothing. Worthy pupils of
incompetent pedagogues, who, not being required by the public to
properly inform themselves with a full knowledge of these important
studies, are perhaps in some measure excused for their shortcomings.
Instead of the inculcation of these useful and more vital lessons of
life, they are required to fritter away time and health over a French
grammar, or other equally foolish study, which cannot, in a vast
majority of cases, be of the least service to them. They had much better
be at home making mud-pies (which, by the way, are about the only ones
that ever ought to be made), or learning to bake wholesome bread, or
even chasing butterflies in summer through the green fields, or braving
the cold of winter by joining in some of the healthful out-of-door
sports. It would, perhaps, be proper enough for such as proposed to fit
themselves for teachers, or who expected to spend their lives abroad, or