Excerpt from New Primer of Sanitation and Physiology: Consisting of Part One, "Public Health, " a Primer of Sanitation and Part Two, "Personal Health, " a Primer of Physiology

The purpose of teaching hygiene and sanitation is to in¿uence human conduct, and school instruction in this subject fails if it does not succeed in establishing in the lives of the children habits that will lead to health. The control of conduct, upon which volumes have been written, is too broad a subject to discuss here, but attention will be called to one fact that must be kept in mind by those who would in¿uence the actions of the child.

The instinct of opposition is a part of the original nature of man. With its practical workings every parent and teacher is familiar, and it is only recording a simple fact of experience to state that this instinct is especially likely to be aroused in either children or adults by new or untried ideas, and by commands or suggestions as to personal con duct that are given without an adequate explanation of the reasons therefor. Since the first purpose of teaching hygiene is to modify personal conduct, and since any text that em bodies what is now known to be most valuable in the conser vation of health must include unfamiliar material, it follows that one of the great problems of the writer of a book of this character is to secure a whole-hearted acceptance of the ideas presented. Experience shows that this can be secured, generally speaking, only after an examination of the evidence for the statements made, and that we must depend on con viction from within rather than on exhortation from without to furnish the motive for the acts necessary to translate knowledge of hygiene into practices that will result in health. Each chapter of this book, therefore, as far as possible, has been made to carry its own credentials, and much care has been taken to make the subject as a whole seem sensible and reasonable to the pupil who uses the text.

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