day no. 15,656 continued... Chesterton on point and decades ahead of the game as per usual

"In America some educational enthusiasts did really announce with pride that the children in particular school were 'all health-mad.' This meant, it really and truly meant, that the infants are in an intense state of vigilance and concentrated excitement on the problem of the preservation of their own bodily health; on how to for see indigestion or mark the stages of cold. And the man meant, he really and truly meant,that this was a condition on which they were to be congratulated. So that, instead of toy helmets or toy swords, they would have toy goggles and toy respirators; possibly little toy bottles of disinfectant or even toy hypodermic syringe. That anybody should be mad on anything is not exactly the goal and ideal of all mental science. That anybody should be mad on health is always of all things the most unhealthy. That children should be mad on health is something so horrible that one would hardly dream of it, outside some such torture-chamber as the tale called 'The Turn of the Screw'; where children are possessed of devils. Yet I repeat that I read the boast with my own eyes in an American paper, as a report of the success of a hygienic educational campaign. It was some silly stuff about sending a clown round to give serious advice on hygiene, enlivened with jokes; I bet the jokes were not so amusing as the serious remarks." -- G.K. Chesterton, The Madhouse and the Nursery, 1921