in this matter, and he had few immediate imitators.

Somewhat later than Basedow, a distinguished English physician,
Thomas Beddoes, worked on somewhat the same lines, seeking to
promote sexual knowledge by lectures and demonstrations. In his
remarkable book, _Hygeia_, published in 1802 (vol. i, Essay IV)
he sets forth the absurdity of the conventional requirement that
"discretion and ignorance should lodge in the same bosom," and
deals at length with the question of masturbation and the need of
sexual education. He insists on the great importance of lectures
on natural history which, he had found, could be given with
perfect propriety to a mixed audience. His experiences had shown
that botany, the amphibia, the hen and her eggs, human anatomy,
even disease and sometimes the sight of it, are salutary from
this point of view. He thinks it is a happy thing for a child to
gain his first knowledge of sexual difference from anatomical
subjects, the dignity of death being a noble prelude to the
knowledge of sex and depriving it forever of morbid prurience.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that this method of teaching
children the elements of sexual anatomy in the _post-mortem_ room
has not found many advocates or followers; it is undesirable, for
it fails to take into account the sensitiveness of children to
such impressions, and it is unnecessary, for it is just as easy
to teach the dignity of life as the dignity of death.

The duty of the school to impart education in matters of sex to
children has in recent years been vigorously and ably advocated
by Maria Lischnewska (op. cit.), who speaks with thirty years'
experience as a teacher and an intimate acquaintance with
children and their home life. She argues that among the mass of