filled with a screen of light wire and large mesh, and from the top of this transom and within the chamber or furnace a sheetiron partition or diaphragm slopes backward, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, to back side of the furnace.

Below the stove, and in the bottom of the furnace, is an opening 2 feet by 2 feet, connecting with a fresh-air duct of the same size, that extends beneath the floor to the outer walls beneath the outside steps, where it must be covered with a wire screen and be protected from the dust.

The tin door of the furnace being closed and the stove heated, the air becomes rarified, rises to the top, is deflected by the slanting partition or diaphragm, and enters the schoolroom through the transom. At the same time the fresh air is supplied to the bottom of the furnace through the duct described above. This duct should be supplied with a valve by which it may be closed if necessary. The smoke flue of the stove is shown in Fig. 2, and behind it is the flue for ventilating the vaults.

But the warm air will not enter the room unless a corresponding volume of air is withdrawn at the same time; and this exhaust should be from near the floor, and on the same side of the room on which the fresh air enters near the top of the room. For the purpose of exhausting the vitiated air of the schoolroom, the furnace flue is extended upward through the roof, and it should be contracted near the top. This flue is represented in Fig. 2 (the large flue), and it will be heated by both the smoke flue on one side of it (which may be of metal) and by the diaphragm or slanting partition at the bottom. This diaphragm will be heated by the hot air impinging against its under side.

The vitiated air from the schoolroom reaches this ventilating flue as follows: The partition between the schoolroom and the cloakroom is raised 2 inches or 3 inches from the floor; on each side of the flue and above the diaphragm there is an opening of 18 inches by 24 inches, through which the air is exhausted from the top of each cloakroom, and as the doors and windows of this room are always closed (as said above) in cold weather, the vitiated air is withdrawn from the school room into the cloakroom, where the clothing is thus warmed and ventilated.

In order to secure warmth and perfect ventilation, it will be perceived that the floor of the schoolroom and the cloakrooms must be perfectly tight, and the walls should be lined with

brick, or otherwise made tight, at least three feet from the floor, and all the entry doors must shut very close. In other words, good construction is indispensable to comfort-both warmth and ventilation. It is for this reason that double windows are requisite in cold climates. All the warm air within which strikes the cold glass of a window is at once chilled, falls to the floor, and creates a draft. Moreover, the best lighted part of the room is close to the window, and the first row of seats may be placed near the windows, as shown in Fig. 1, if the window is double.

At night, and before the children arrive in the morning, the cold air duct and the ventilating flues (I) leading from the cloakrooms may be closed. In that case, the door (D) of the furnace being open, the air within the schoolroom will come into direct contact with the stove, rise through the transom, and thus rotate throughout the schoolroom and warm all parts of it; and children may one by one warm their feet at the stove. But when the room is filled with children, the door (D) would be closed, and the fresh air duct and the ventilating flues (I) must be open in order that the stove may constantly heat the fresh air and ventilate as well as warm the room.

In Summer the diaphragm above the furnace may be raised to a vertical position; if then the door (D) be closed, the warm air of the schoolroom may pass upward through the transom and the ventilating flue, while the fresh air is supplied through the entry doors and windows, at W W (for this purpose and not for light), and through the two windows that may be raised in the front. In mild weather or on damp days a fire in the enclosed stove will help to produce the upward draft without heating the room.

A pailful of dry earth must be thrown into each vault every day, and the contents of the vault must be removed every week. This can be done by sliding outward a water-tight trough made for the purpose and fitted into each vault. These troughs should then be replaced, and each door through which the trough is drawn should be securely locked.

The house should have a dry, clean, and warm cellar; but where this cannot be afforded the house should stand on a sufficient number of posts two or three feet high and boarded around to the ground. These posts, and especially the foundation of the chimney and of the vaults, must be absolutely secure from frost, and the floors might be boarded below the joists and

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plastered between; and there must be felt or thick layers of paper between the floors. A cold floor is costly and dangerous; and the cold schoolhouse costs more in the end, in health and in fuel, than it costs to build a tight, warm house at first.

As to the light. The best light for the pupil comes from the left, with no cross lights; but if the whole left side of the room is one continuous window, then the pupils in the back part of the room will face the light, though the window is at the left. To obviate this difficulty the first rows of desks might be placed with the axis at right angles to the window. After the first two rows, each desk is placed with its axis at a greater angle than the last, till the last row is at an angle of forty-five degrees. Such an arrangement is novel, but upon reflection there seems to be no necessity for the prevailing rectangular placement of school desks, with the teacher at the middle front. In this plan

the teacher is at the left front of the pupils at T, and the oblique situation of the desks is shown. This position requires chairs and not shelves for seats-the only rational seat; and there is no excuse for any but adjustable seats and desks.

The best light is from the top of the window. A window properly lights the room only at a distance of one and a half times its height. The south light is the best. The north light is too cold in Winter and lacks the effect of the sun's rays in the room-chemical and hygienic effects not explained, but known to exist. The east and the west window admit the slanting rays in the morning or afternoon. In Summer, though the rays are hot, they are nearly vertical at noon and do not shine directly in at the windows of the south exposure. But there should be very light shades to roll from the top and temper the light when it is too bright, and dark shades to roll from the bottom to shut out the light sometimes-to shut it out from the bottom because, as said above, the light from the top of the window shines across the room. An awning of white cotton cloth on a rectangular frame outside the window would be inexpensive and worth many times the cost in a single Summer.

Any intelligent carpenter could build a house like the one described, and if some architect would build into it only a little good taste and chaste beauty, the house as well as the teacher would be an educator and a public benefactor.

THE DOCTOR AND THE SCHOOLS.*

But it is a much

The public school has more to fear from its friends than from its enemies. To condemn it as a nuisance which ought to be abated is to fight it openly and above board. We can meet our enemies in the field and defend our position. more difficult task to ward off the attacks of those who criticise whatever does not square with their own notions or who, knowing only a part, proclaim the worthlessness of the whole.

Thus a physician of some prominence, said to me the other day, "Your schools are filling our insane asylums with patients." To which I might have replied, "You doctors, through your blunders, are sending half your patients to the graveyards, when if you had let them alone, they would have recovered." One story would have been as true as the other, and both of them equally false.

I cannot defend the schools against every charge, but in the name of thousands of conscientious teachers, who are striving faithfully to do their duty and who sincerely regret the tendency to crowd the brain at the expense of the heart and body, I do protest against the tendency to charge up to them and the school system all the evils to which childhood is heir. One physician would not have children go to school until they are seven or eight years of age. When asked, "What would you do with them in the cities and villages where parents are at work?" he replies, "I don't know." The fact is, he had never thought of that. Another one would have them in school but half the day, and when asked, "What of the rest of the time? replied in the same strain, "I don't know." These men were honest, but neither of them grasped the entire situation.

"What is the full duty of the State to the child in a republican government?" has never yet been fully answered. It has not yet been fairly considered. It is very easy to find fault. Undoubtedly if Gabriel should blow his trumpet to-night, some one in this audience would exclaim, "This is the result of the public school system."

* By Henry Sabin, Superintendent of Public Instruction. Read before Iowa Public Health Association, at Davenport, May 19, 1896.

We must not forget that the public school is here to stay. It cannot be supplanted by any system of church, parochial or private instruction. If all the Christian churches in Iowa should combine to educate each the children of its own communion, there would still be one-half the school population to be cared for by the State. I mention this only to illustrate the necessity of considering calmly and with great deliberation those questions which concern public education.

The question naturally arises, what does a schoolmaster know about medicine. Nothing whatever, except to let it alone. For that reason he is of all men most competent to talk about it. Talk about those things of which you are supposed to know but little, and the world will excuse your mistakes; but when you talk of those things in which you are supposed to be an expert, every mistake will be as a dagger thrust between the ribs of your reputation.

There is no science which has made as great advancement during the past fifty years as that of medicine. The old list of salts and senna, of jalap and aloes, of calomel, rhubarb, emetics, blisters, belladonna, morphine, leeches, and lancet, has given place to newer and more simple remedies. The skillful surgeon will take a living subject all to pieces, joint by joint; he will disembowel him, cleanse the cavities with some antiseptic preparation, and put each organ back into its proper position. He will split a man's skull in twain and wedge it apart permanently, in order that his brain may have a chance to expand and grow. The dentist will extract his teeth, fill them, and insert them again in their cavities; the oculist will take out his eyes, turn them inside out, and put them back in their sockets.

It is no longer necessary for a man to die in order to be dissected. The time is coming when the living subject will willingly place himself upon the dissecting table and allow the surgeons to take him to pieces, provided they will compensate him for his time and trouble.

It has been the duty of the doctor in the past to heal the sick, to relieve us of our aches and pains, to thwart that penance which nature thrusts upon us for the violation of her laws.

In the future the physician's art will consist largely in keeping men well, in warding off sickness, in preventing the