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scope for independent initiative which it affords are elements vital to our national character. They forget that all our first steps in national education were made under those influences, which this nation will never permit long to be overpowered. It matters nothing to them that the supersession of voluntary management means an enormous increase of expense for purposes which do not in the smallest degree benefit the cause of education. Monotony, order, the developing of increasing intricacy in the mechanical organization: these are the things dear to their hearts, and for these they will sacrifice anything.

This vast organization once set on foot, it is very easy to find specious reasons for adding to its enormous cost. The argument is a very simple one. Education is a good thing; therefore all money spent upon education is well spent; we are imparting education, and so all the money we spend is well spent. They never stop to ask themselves what education is. They never pause to consider that "educationalists" themselves are hopelessly divided, and that the various sections amongst them would denounce the subjects which other sections hold of primary value as not worth the time that is spent on them. It would be quite hopeless to suggest to them that, in the judgment of all who bring common sense to bear upon these problems, the only rational conclusion is that at least half of the best devised educational curriculum is probably quite useless, and that we are lucky if, out of the mass of indigestible provender, the pupils manage to digest a small modicum of solid nutriment. It is often the best wisdom to be modest in our ambitions. Let us build on sound foundations. So long

as we pursue these honestly, Nature, which is, after all, the most efficient agent, will help us in her own way. She will give us none of her alliance if we indulge in whimsical experiments.

The time has come for a really serious consideration of the whole scheme of our educational administration. It is little more than half a century ago since we entered upon the project of constructing a complete scheme of State education. We began by introducing a certain amount of compulsion, for which fairly sound arguments might then be adduced. Whether in the result it has answered to the expectations of its advocates may reasonably be doubted. It is quite certain that since 1870 our State system has gone through strange transmogrifications, which would appear to show that it has been guided by no clear and consistent principle. It is equally certain that it has killed out a

great deal of the enthusiasm and initiation which were the best allies of the school, and that it has failed to make that demand upon the energy and ambition of the pupil which was an incentive far superior to any pedagogic stimulus. Can anyone maintain that the efficiency of the system, as it now exists, compared with what prevailed fifty years ago, reflects the difference between the modest cost of those days and the present enormously increased expenditure? Are we eighty or a hundred times better educated than we were in 1870 ?

The fight has hitherto been very largely carried out as a struggle between different sections of experts who have accustomed themselves to a certain set of shibboleths; and it has been largely tinged, of course, by Party rivalry. One Party has brought against their opponents a deliberate charge of hostility to education, and they have based this upon certain alterations in the system of grants, which no Government with a due sense of financial responsibility could have avoided. The Government have vindicated themselves, with an ardour that is almost over-strained, from the charge that they wish to starve education; and we would be glad to think that in their ardour of exculpation they will not allow some of their most useful projects of economy to be defeated. The contest might, perhaps, be left there, but an uneasy suspicion will intrude itself that possibly neither side in the political fight has recognized the extent to which, in the mind of the ordinary citizen, a conviction has established itself that a very large proportion of our educational expenditure is purely wasteful, and that, owing to the professional pedantry of the expert, a great deal of what poses as advanced educational effort really sinks below the efforts that belonged to previous generations, in regard to value of results. The Government has not a moment too soon-many of us are inclined to think rather too late-made some movement towards checking faulty methods of dispensing financial aid, and they will deserve our thanks if they persevere. They have repelled all accusations of lack of educational zeal. But it is not at all certain that another sort of fight will not soon have to be waged, and that we shall be faced with a determined reaction against educational extravagance as soon as the nation awakens to its extent and has grown tired of the pedants who have exploited a great national interest for their own ends. HENRY CRAIK

ABRAMS

SOME FACTS

THE recent work of those doctors practising the Abrams methods in London has been so valuable that its results should be more widely known and the theory of the methods better understood by the public. Many victims of chronic illness would then at least have the opportunity of testing its merits if so desirous.

We may, I think, safely say that the early stages of chronic illness begin gradually by infinitesimal shades and degrees before serious "symptoms" develop. We may also assume that clinical methods are not delicate enough to detect incipient disease until it has established such a hold on the victims that " symptoms are evident and unpleasant.

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The writer, who suffered from chronic ill-health (toxæmia, if you prefer it, or auto-intoxication) had four operations and consulted and consulted over twenty physicians and surgeons, in a period of twenty-three years, with steadily deteriorating vitality and powers. Finally, in completely sceptical mood, he submitted to the Abrams treatment. In four weeks he felt a new man, his "symptoms" went and were forgotten-his health, eyesight, hearing, digestion, and vitality (or interest in life) all improved beyond his belief. Being, naturally, intrigued, he set to work to try and understand what had happened and, rather to his surprise, found that a perfectly reasonable and intelligible explanation existed.

Briefly, Abrams treatment demonstrates the hypothesis that pure blood means good health. Perhaps no physician will dispute this! But only a very small percentage of people have such perfect constitutions that their blood remains pure under conditions of modern city life. A country labourer, a farmer, a fox-hunting squire, a sailor, a hunter, a rancher-any follower of an open-air life— should be healthy, because he gets exercise, oxygen in plenty, fresh unadulterated food, and, above all, sun.

From the rays of the sun human beings evolved. We are children of light and air and "fresh" food. Then why do people age at thirty-five or forty? Why do they go down-hill" after then? A certain number do not. Those

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with good healthy blood last till sixty or more, almost at their best.

But what of the vast number who begin to fail at that critical age of forty? What is the difference? The answer is plain and agreed-a contaminated lifestream is slowly poisoning them.

Death should not be caused by disease. It should come peacefully, like sleep, to a worn-out machine, at one hundred or even more. The blood becomes infected very slowly. Poisons are absorbed instead of eliminated. Microbic infections (possibly inherited infections) creep farther into the system once they get into the blood-stream.

A weak spot is present almost in everyone. Perhaps the circulation at that spot is slow and weak, and then some of the invaders settle down and "breed." Those bacterial hordes known to the medical profession as streptococci or "coli" or "staphylococci," and many, many others, recognized one or the other as the precursors or attendants of almost every infection, begin to produce symptoms."

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Without attempting to deal with orthodox medical practice in its vast and thorny ramifications (wherein no two practitioners ever seem to envisage quite the same paths), let us see what can be made, in simple English, of the Abrams treatment.

If it be granted that, as a very general thesis, the above remarks on the necessity of pure blood for good health are approximately sound, what good can the Abrams method effect?

The Abrams diagnostic system (fully explained in the published work of the London practitioners) detects various blood infections by tests at certain classified vibration rates, the existence of which are now (the writer believes) admitted by every British scientist who has examined the system.

Reactions are obtained through the abdominal reflexes of a "subject," which reactions are indications of corresponding disease conditions in the person whose blood is under examination. Very many (thousands) of "tests have been carried out in this country alone.

The writer has personally witnessed dozens, and has no hesitation in saying that anyone with normal senses can detect and verify the presence or absence of the reactions tested for in the blood under examination.

Experience is necessary for accurate conclusions and knowledge for their application. But, in the hands of a

trained physician, it is found that the "reactions," when treated by the appropriate rate on the "oscilloclast," gradually disappear, over a period of, say, from three weeks upwards. With their disappearance the "symptoms" of the patient disappear, provided his or her vitality has not been lowered beyond the point where recovery is possible.

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For no medical systems (the E.R.A. included) aspire to cure, " but only to assist the wonderful recuperative powers of Nature to restore the "balance balance" of the body and mind to the normal.

So, very shortly, the treatment devised by Abrams operates.

The writer does not hope that everyone will consider his statements seriously! If one sufferer in a hundred who reads this will take the trouble to test its truth and thereby derives benefit, it will indeed do good.

Because the prevention of disease is the "medicine" of posterity-just as the treatment of "symptoms" is still the orthodox "medicine" of this generation.

Prevention depends on detection before serious damage develops.

The Abrams method of diagnosis detects and classifies infections with a delicacy and accuracy which transcends all other methods in general use, just as much as wireless transcends the telegraph.

The scientific explanation of the precise effect of the "vibrations" given out by the "oscilloclast" is admittedly incomplete, but, in this country, Professor Taylor-Jones, the physicist, has demonstrated that "magnetic" impulses are transmitted to the patient, as claimed by Abrams.

That they produce results in cases where every other treatment has failed, there is a mass of unimpeachable evidence from both patients and physicians.

But the writer's contention, which he would be glad to develop for the benefit of countless city dwellers who have entered on the dark path that leads down to chronic illhealth and so to definite disease and death, is that a method exists and is already practised to a considerable extent, by which illness can be detected in early stages and prevented, to a degree hitherto unknown; because the blood can be tested and the disease-infections removed from it, and because pure blood signifies health.

It would be unreasonable and illogical to expect that one course of treatment will make a sickly person permanently robust.

A return to, or continuance of, the conditions of life

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