Mental Hygiene.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7872, 14 July 1905, Page 3

Mental Hygiene.

In a lecture delivered in Sydney before the Ladies' Sanityx.v Alssotintion. Dr. Chisholm Koss pointed out that the present age was one of too curly and rapid mental growth. The early and severe taxation upon the. resources of thu brain, he said, produced effects which were beconring m»re and more 'disastrous, and explained why brain (iisoideis tend.il to appear at an earlier ugc than formerly, and were characterised by greutor severity. He believed that thu young should be suitably educated'to fit them for the keen competition of Modern life, but the views of school educators andt physicians competent to discuss this cpicslion were often diametrically opposed. I'ndoub'ledly. he said, the lirst years of life should -bo mainly occupied by moral and physical training, and during that jieriod the amount of mental cultivation whidi a child's brain was Capable of receiving was much less than was commonly supposed. The present time ihud been aptly described as a "brain age," but it was a brain age in which brains were forced to grow at the expense of development. U was less an age of thought and reason than of remembered facts and transmitted ideas. It might be set dowy. as an almost ununfniling biological law, he added, that premature functioning or development led to the nrrest of development Inter, and the result was irrco/ira&le injury.