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Table of Contents

The Problem of Sexual Hygiene

are eight years of age. The boys and girls should be given the instruction separately by means of charts, pictures, and stereopticon views, beginning with the lower forms of life, flowers, plants, and then closing with the organs in man. These lectures and illustrations should be given every year to all the boys and girls separately, having those from eight to ten together at one time, and those from ten to twelve, and those from over twelve to sixteen." Dr. Henry was evidently not aware that the principle of a special teacher appointed by Government to give special instruction in matters of sex in all State schools had already been adopted in Canada, in the province of Ontario; the teacher thus appointed goes from school to school and teaches the elements of sexual physiology and anatomy, and the duty of treating sexual matters with reverence, to classes of boys and of girls from the age of ten. The course is not compulsory, but any School Board may call upon the special teacher to deliver the lectures. This appointment has met with so much approval that it is proposed to appoint further teachers on the same lines, women as well as

It is not necessary that the school teacher of sex should be a physician. For personal and particular advice on the concrete difficulties of sex, however, as well as for the more special and detailed hygiene of the sexual relationship and the precautions demanded by eugenics, we must call in the physician. Yet none of these things so far enter the curriculum through which the physician passes to reach his profession; he is often only a layman in relation to them. Even if we are assured that these subjects form part of his scientific equipment, that fact by no means guarantees his tact, sympathy, and insight in addressing the young, whether by general lectures or individual interviews, both these being forms of imparting sexual hygiene for which we may properly call upon the physician, especially towards the end of the school or college course, and at the outset of any career in the world.

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