Pedagogical Anthropology, Maria Montessori [online e book reader TXT] 📗

results that our little ones, by the time they are five years old, have lost nearly all their defects in pronunciation.

Spirometry.—The pulmonary capacity may be measured directly by means of an instrument called the spirometer; the breath must be strongly expelled through a tube opening into a hollow cylinder, thus raising a graduated piston contained in it; and, by reading the figure indicated on the piston-rod, we learn the volume of air expelled from the lungs.

Such an instrument is better adapted for use by adults than by children; and if it should ever come to be introduced into the schools, it should not in any case be used below the elementary grades.

The person who is going to measure the capacity of his lungs by means of the spirometer, begins by drawing in an unusually deep or forced inhalation; then, after holding his breath for a moment, he proceeds to expel into the rubber tube all the air in his lungs, in a forced exhalation. In an exercise of this sort, all the difficulties of respiratory gymnastics are successively surmounted—inspiration, respiratory pause, expiration.

In fact, in accomplishing the forced inspiration, all the pulmonary alveoli must be dilated to the maximum extent, and at the same time the thorax must reach its maximum dilation. This is a very different matter from normal inspiration, which does not completely dilate the alveoli. As a matter of fact, the tidal air or air of respiration, i.e., the air taken in and expelled in each normal respiration, is about 500 cubic centimetres; but the sum total of air habitually contained in the lungs is made up of two quantities: first, that which may be emitted by a forced expiration, the supplemental or reserve air, amounting to 1,600 cubic centimetres; and secondly, the air which cannot ever be emitted, because no amount of effort could completely expel all the air from the lungs; residual air or respiratory residuum amounting to 1,200 cubic centimetres. To recapitulate, the average pulmonary capacity is the sum of the following average quantities of air:

Residual air, or respiratory residuum (which can never be expelled from the lungs) = 1200 cu. cm. Respiratory reserve (which can be expelled by a forced expiration) = 1600 cu. cm. Tidal air = 500 cu. cm. Complementary air (which can be drawn in by a forced inspiration) = 1670 cu. cm.

Accordingly, the total pulmonary capacity is about 5,000 cubic centimetres, or five litres. But in normal respiration, the capacity is less, i.e., about 3,300 cubic centimetres, the air due to a forced inspiration not being included.

Therefore, in each normal respiration a half litre of pure air (assuming that it is pure) is introduced and mingled with the vitiated air already within the lungs; and since, in expiration, a third only of this 500 cubic centimetres is eliminated, it follows that 166 cubic centimetres are mingled with the 3,300 cubic centimetres; in other words, that only one-tenth of the air is renewed in each normal act of respiration.

A very energetic forced inspiration may draw into the lungs, in addition to the customary 500 cubic centimetres, an additional 1,670 cubic centimetres of pure air, complementary air. In this case the lungs contain upward of 5,000 cubic centimetres of air.

The forced expiration which follows upon this extra deep inhalation purges the lungs of the vitiated air which has formed there. In this way we complete an exercise that is eminently hygienic.

Now, these spirometric movements are fraught with difficulties: 1. The forced inspiration, deep enough to extend the alveoli, may be more or less complete. If a cloth wrung out in cold water is laid across the shoulders, the inspiration which follows as a result of reflex action is far deeper than that produced by an act of will; this proves that the lungs can be dilated to a point beyond that which seems to us to be the extreme limit, and therefore that with practice we may learn to dilate our lungs still further.

2. When the attempt is made to hold the breath after a forced inspiration, almost everyone at the first trials will allow more or less of the air to escape; that is, they will discover themselves incapable of controlling their own organs of respiration; therefore, a gymnastic exercise for acquiring such control is necessary. This is the exercise which will make us masters of the movements required to produce vocal sounds at pleasure.

3. A slow expiration so controlled as to give time for the air to penetrate into the spirometer, is accomplished, though somewhat unevenly, the first few times, and is perfected with practice.

It results from the above that: 1. We take in less air than we are able to take in; 2. part of this air is lost outside the spirometer; consequently the spirometer registers a pulmonary capacity below that which the lungs actually have; and we shall find that, with practice, the volumetric figure will successively augment. But the pulmonary capacity has not augmented in proportion; it is only that practice has perfected the respiratory movements. Accordingly, the spirometer may serve as an instrument to test the progress made in respiratory gymnastics, and, in the case of those who have already become skilful in its use, it becomes a really valuable instrument for measuring the respiratory capacity.

When we remember that a portion of the air, i.e., 1,200 cubic centimetres, never issues from the lungs, it follows that the respiratory capacity is less by 1,200 cubic centimetres than the pulmonary capacity, which, as we have seen, is on an average upward of 5,000 cubic centimetres (5,370) in the adult man. Hence, the spirometer directly measures the respiratory capacity, and only indirectly the pulmonary capacity.

When women measure their lungs by means of the spirometer, they have difficulty in registering 2,000 cubic centimetres, and men have difficulty in attaining 2,600 cubic centimetres. Instead of which, a man ought to be able to register between 3,800 and 4,000 cubic centimetres.

What keeps the lungs healthy is an abundant aeration with air rich in oxygen, and not impure with carbon dioxide and other poisonous gases. When the pulmonary air-cells are insufficiently dilated, they are predisposed to attack by the bacillus of tuberculosis. Indeed, pulmonary tuberculosis usually begins at the apexes of the lungs, which are less thoroughly aerated, and also usually attacks persons with narrow chests. The treatment of tuberculosis is eminently a fresh-air treatment; tuberculous patients may be benefited and even cured in a remarkable percentage of cases (50 per cent.) if they are exposed day and night to the open air. In this way the relation between free respiration and pulmonary health is demonstrated.

In America at the present time the hygienic rule of sleeping at night, winter and summer, with the windows open, is gaining ground, and even the practice of sleeping in the open air. And the various forms of sport also have the beneficial effect of bringing those who indulge in them into a healthy contact with fresh air, which civilised man has shown a fatal tendency to abandon.

The same exercise which dilates the lungs (the contents) also dilates the thorax (the container). The result is that man ends by acquiring the thorax corresponding to his vocation, or in other words, a thorax corresponding to the life that he leads in consequence of the form of work to which he devotes himself. Shepherds in mountain districts and mountain peasants have the largest thorax, notwithstanding, as we have seen, that they are more scantily nourished. In cities, the maximum average circumference of chest is found among the cart-drivers, and the minimum among university students and in general among those who have grown up in an inclosed environment, with the thorax artificially cramped by the position assumed while writing or reading at a desk; yet this is the class of persons who have abundant nutriment.

Consequently, we find a division of air and bread between different social castes; those who have air, do not have bread, and they possess large lungs, out of proportion to bodies which, being underfed, have been unable to grow; and those who have bread do not have air, and they possess lungs that are insufficient for the needs of bodies that have grown under the influence of abundant nutrition. Consequently, all civilised men are physiologically out of equilibrium, and their physical health is lessened. But those who suffer most from this loss of equilibrium are the studious class, who have nourished themselves upon hopes and opened their minds to great ideas, and deluded themselves into undertaking big enterprises; but in real action they find that they are weak, and that they easily fall into discouragement and depression, and when their will-power forces them onward, their organism responds with nervous prostration and melancholia.

It is a sad fact that at the present day the best energies of man reach maturity possessed of insufficient lungs, and consequently liable to break down in health, energy and strength.

A large part of the studious class, such, for instance, as the teachers, are at the present day devoting themselves to a form of work which is not a pulmonary exercise, but pulmonary destruction.

We must remember that healthy exercise of the lungs should take place in the open air, and consists of indrawn breaths deep enough to dilate the air-chambers. Instead of this, the teacher speaks, which means that he makes forced expirations, during many hours in an enclosed environment and in an assemblage of persons who, for the most part, are far from clean. The bacillus of tuberculosis finds in the teacher its favourite camping-ground. In fact, statistics indicate that the maximum mortality from tuberculosis is among teachers; higher even than among nurses. It is really distressing to think of the ignorance of hygiene in which our schools are even yet steeped, so that they seem forgetful of the body, in their pursuit of a spirit that eludes them and that, as a matter of fact, is not being educated in anything approaching a rational manner.

When we enter a class-room, we see rows of benches constructed like orthopedic machines, to the end that the vertical columns of the pupils shall not be distorted during their enforced labour; and the thought arises: this is the spot in which the teacher becomes a consumptive for the sake of transforming the children into hunchbacks. What is the reward of so great a sacrifice? What sort of a preparation in ideals and in character are they giving to the new generations through such disastrous means? What are the obstacles which they are being taught, through so much suffering, to surmount and to conquer? What, in short, is the spiritual gain achieved at the cost of so great an impoverishment of the body?

The answering silence that greets these questions indicates that we have a great mission to accomplish.

Anthropological studies made upon pupils have demonstrated that school-children rarely attain a sufficient chest development. I also have made my modest contribution, proving that the brightest scholars, the prize-winners, etc., who, as a general rule, also enjoy an advantage in social position, have a narrower chest measure. Among the children that are recognised as the brightest in their classes, I have been able to distinguish two categories: those who are exceptionally intelligent, and those who are exceptionally studious; the former have a better chest development than the latter.

Signorina Massa, one of my pupils at the University, in the course of kindred studies made among pupils of a uniform social grade (the poorer classes) observed that the best and brightest scholars, etc., have a chest circumference and a muscular strength notably inferior to the children who are not studious. There can be no doubt that an assiduous application to the study table impoverishes the organism and above all impedes the normal development of the thorax. This fact has a really overwhelming importance. Study the tables of mortality in Italy