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NEW APPROACHES TO RELIGION AND POWER

Liberation,
(De)Coloniality, and
Liturgical Practices
Flipping the Song Bird
Becca Whitla
New Approaches to Religion and Power

Series Editor
Joerg Rieger
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN, USA
While the relationship of religion and power is a perennial topic, it only
continues to grow in importance and scope in our increasingly globalized
and diverse world. Religion, on a global scale, has openly joined power
struggles, often in support of the powers that be. But at the same time,
religion has made major contributions to resistance movements. In this
context, current methods in the study of religion and theology have cre-
ated a deeper awareness of the issue of power: Critical theory, cultural
studies, postcolonial theory, subaltern studies, feminist theory, critical race
theory, and working class studies are contributing to a new quality of
study in the field. This series is a place for both studies of particular prob-
lems in the relation of religion and power as well as for more general
interpretations of this relation. It undergirds the growing recognition that
religion can no longer be studied without the study of power.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14754
 Becca Whitla

Liberation, (De)
Coloniality, and
Liturgical Practices
Flipping the Song Bird
Becca Whitla
Saint Andrew’s College
Saskatoon, SK, Canada

ISSN 2634-6079        ISSN 2634-6087 (electronic)

New Approaches to Religion and Power
ISBN 978-3-030-52635-1    ISBN 978-3-030-52636-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52636-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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 Acknowledgements

The work in these pages is undergirded by the many communities in which

I have sung and taught over many years. I am particularly grateful to the
Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto, the Echo Women’s
Choir, the H.E.R.E. Local 75 Choir, and the Toronto School of Theology
Choir. The book itself is also the result of a rich engagement with many
people who have accompanied me in my scholarly journey. To each and
every one of you, too numerous to name, thank you!
My doctoral research was supported generously by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada through a Joseph-Armand
Bombardier Canada Graduate Doctoral Scholarship and by an Ontario
Graduate Scholarship. This support, along with funding from Emmanuel
College, made possible my scholarly research and analysis. Thanks also to
the students, staff, and faculty at Emmanuel for journeying with me, espe-
cially Emmanuel Principal Mark Toulouse and Acting Principal Phyllis
Airhart for travel funds to present earlier versions of my research at the fol-
lowing: the Conference of the International Academy of Practical Theology
in Pretoria, South Africa (2015); the Christian Congregational Music
Conference in Rippon, UK (2015); and the “Reforming Imagination”
Conference of the United Reformed Church, in Birmingham, UK (2017),
which was also supported by a grant from the Oxford Fund of The United
Church of Canada. I am also grateful to the Seminario Evangelico de
Teología de Matanzas for supporting two study retreats in 2017 and 2018
during which I wrote outlines for two chapters and my conclusion.
Many thanks to the members of my doctoral committee, Pamela
Couture, Lim Swee Hong, and William Kervin. They warmly

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

accompanied me from the beginning, critically engaging with my work,

gently and firmly pushing me where I needed to be pushed. In my work
as his research fellow, Lim Swee Hong cheerfully encouraged me by offer-
ing me opportunities to teach, to travel, to present my ideas in academic
and community settings, and by having countless conversations over cof-
fee. As my doctoral supervisor—and as my friend—William Kervin went
above and beyond, guiding me every step along the way and emboldening
me with his careful and clear advice which I usually followed. It was an
honour to reflect on some of the principles of this work with him as we
together midwifed the worship life of the Emmanuel College community.
As I prepared the manuscript for publishing, I was nurtured by my
community of colleagues and students at St. Andrew’s College in
Saskatoon. I am grateful to William Whitla and Carol Zollinger for edito-
rial assistance in the final stages of preparing the manuscript, along with
series editor Joerg Rieger and the team at Palgrave Macmillan, including
the anonymous reviewers who carefully engaged my work. Thanks also to
Keith Nunn, Ian Sowton, Mark MacDonald, and Susan Beaver for reading
sections of the manuscript.
The scholarship in this book was deeply enriched through my involve-
ment with the Canadian Decolonial Theology Project: my heartfelt thanks
go to these colleague-friends—Néstor Medina, Michel Andraos, and Lee
Cormie. Our work together deeply challenged me and sharpened my use
of post and decolonial theory. In particular, I would like to pay tribute to
Néstor Medina who introduced me to Latin American decolonial thinking
as my professor before I began my doctoral studies. His scholarship, ongo-
ing mentoring, and critical engagement with my work have provided a
rich source for reflection throughout these pages.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for their patience, love, and
support. To my brother and his boys, Mike, Jake, and Kyle Whitla, I love
you. I carry the memory of your beloved wife and mother, Lisa Haberman,
in my heart. To adopted family members Karen Haberman, Marty
Crowder, and Dick Moore; to friends Natalie Celuch and Loreto Freire;
to my children’s godfather, Peter Turner; to my parents, Nancy and Bill
Whitla, thank you for meals, walks, laughter, and encouraging words. To
cousin Richard Norman, thanks for being a fellow traveller. Deepest
thanks go to my children Emma Whitla and David Gasser and their father,
Alan Gasser. Thank you for believing in me and in my work. Thank you
for loving me. Thank you for being part of my syncopated liberating praxis
of life!
 Praise for Liberation, (De)Coloniality, and
Liturgical Practices

“‘Singing in a decolonial key’ is the project here, with invigorating and demanding
insights about how to achieve it. The cheeky sub-title—‘Flipping the Song Bird’—
indicates the defiant energy at play as autobiographical narrative (in its work of
‘reconfiguring [the] self’) and liberation and contextual theologies (especially
from Canadian perspectives) agitate against ‘musicoloniality.’ Sound/music,
words, and performances all come in for scrutiny, as both questions arise of post-
colonial theological strategies and proposals emerge towards a more liberating
liturgical theology. The result is a very vivid picture of singing as ‘a living out of
God’s image in us.’ Highly recommended!”
—Stephen Burns, Professor of Liturgical & Practical Theology,
Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity, Australia

“Becca Whitla carefully and critically undertakes multiple discourses while ground-
ing them in this project of liberating congregational singing. The arguments are
well thought-­out, finely crafted, deeply researched, and carefully nuanced. This
book presents various examples to analyze, interrogate, and critique liberationist,
decolonial, and postcolonial perspectives. It also presents a specific and practical
place for these interrogations to occur, so the work of this thesis does not remain
for the elite or the ivory tower of academia. I highly recommend this manuscript
for anyone looking at religion and culture, liturgical studies, as well as liberationist,
decolonial, and postcolonial thought-in-action.”
—Neomi De Anda, Associate Professor,
Department of Religious Studies, University of Dayton, Ohio, USA
and President, Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States

“In creative defiance of Cartesian assumptions, Becca Whitla flips the equation and
declares We sing, therefore we are! Singing embodies community empowerment,
not an individual cognitive state of being. Singing has a long history of subversion
and, by implication, the potential for liberation. Whitla is not a casual observer of
the liberating potential of singing, but an instigator of communal singing as a way
of empowering those on the margins of privilege. Her passionate rhetoric—
“Flipping the Song Bird”—is matched by a creative, provocative methodol-
ogy exposing deep-seated colonial privilege as a façade for patriarchal power
manifest in human oppression.”
—C. Michael Hawn, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Church
Music, Southern Methodist University, USA

“Here is the most rigorously sustained engagement in liberationist, postcolonial,

and decolonial theory and theology yet in practical and liturgical theology. A host
of hermeneutical tools that have previously tended to remain theoretical and
abstract (e.g., border thinking, intermixture, hybridity, mimicry) come alive in
Becca Whitla’s hands and are elegantly employed to original and empowering
results. What starts out about congregational singing becomes nothing short of a
hope-filled and Spirt-inspired call to conversion beyond Eurocentrism in music
and liturgy, theology and faith.”
—William S. Kervin, Associate Professor of Public Worship,
Emmanuel College of Victoria University at the University of Toronto, Canada

“Drawing on a variety of social science methodologies, Becca Whitla examines the

practice of congregational song music-making in a variety of contexts, particularly
through a decolonial approach. This is an emerging area of study and the approach
is ground-breaking. I foresee this work as generating vigorous discussions that will
help further research work in the field for years to come.”
—Lim Swee Hong (林瑞峰), Deer Park Associate Professor of Sacred Music and
Director, Master of Sacred Music program at Emmanuel College of Victoria
University at the University of Toronto, Canada

“Whitla’s book moves us into a profound reflection on the ways in which incarna-
tional song guides us into a path that makes the invisible visible. She has obviously
spent time in careful exploration and deep meditation on the symbiotic relation-
ship between traditional liturgical music structures and the so-called anti-structure
of other particular styles and genres. Whitla’s book will be of tremendous value to
academia, the ministerial community, as well as the larger community of faith alike.”
—Cynthia A. Wilson, Executive Director of Worship Resources
for Discipleship Ministries and Director of Liturgical Resources,
United Methodist ChurchGeneral Agency, USA
 Contents

1 Introduction: Flipping the Song Bird  1

Methodology and Outline   6
Postscript: Flipping the (Song) Bird  13
Bibliography  14

2 (Trans)forming Praxis: Initial Rubrics for Liberating

Song Leading 17
Introduction  17
Historical Context: The Blossoming of Congregational Singing  18
Toward Rubrics for Liberating Song Leading  21
Context and Accountability  22
Interrogating Power in Song Leading: Epistemic Humility
and Kenosis  26
Messing Up  29
Toward Liberating Accompaniment  30
Bibliography  32

3 Untangling the Threads of Our Stories 35

Introduction  35
Part One: Singing My Story  37
The Broader Context: Coloniality in Canada  47
Multiculturalism as a Linchpin of Coloniality in Canada  51
Part Two: Making Sense of Our Stories  53
Unbleaching  55

ix
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x Contents

Unsuturing  57
Mestizaje-Intermixture  59
From Being to Becoming  62
Part Three: Church and Coloniality  63
Part Four: Congregational Singing Is a Risky Liberating Praxis  70
Bibliography  74

4 The Empire Sings 79

Introduction  79
The Rise of Hymnody  82
Setting the Historical Context  82
The Rise of Hymnody in Britain  86
Confronting Empire: Hymnic Coloniality  94
Unforgetting: Imperial/Colonial Theology in Mission Hymns  94
Unsanitizing: The Legacy Continues  97
Unbleaching: The Pervasiveness of Hymnic Coloniality 104
Unmasking: Musical Coloniality in Hymns 109
Musicoloniality 112
Choralism: An Example of Musicoloniality 117
Bibliography 121

5 Singing Back Against Empire (or the Subaltern Sings Back)127

Introduction 127
Beyond Subjectivity 128
Mimicry and Epistemic Disobedience in “From Greenland’s Icy
Mountains” 131
Beyond Hybridity 138
“O store Gud”: The Modulations of “How Great Thou Art” 142
Drawing the Threads Together 149
Another Way of Knowing/Singing: El Espíritu de Dios 152
Singing in a Decolonial Key 158
Bibliography 160

6 Border Singing163
Introduction 163
The Christmas Story 163
Christmas Eve: Las Posadas 173
The Midwife’s Carol 181
 Contents  xi

Border(ed) Lives, Border Liturgy 188

Bibliography 191

7 Liberating the Song Bird193

Introduction 193
Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life! 194
Historical Context 195
Beyond “Border Thinking” 196
Border Singing 202
Turning Toward the Spirit, the Subversive Holy Breath of Life 203
Liberating Liturgical Theology 207
Juan Luis Segundo: The Church Reimagined 208
Liberating Liturgy: The Holy Spirit Enlivens and Liberates the
Work of the People 212
The Concrete 213
Community 216
Transformative Liberating Accompaniment 217
Risks and Challenges 219
Bibliography 224

8 A Call to Conversion229

Appendix: Versions of “O Store Gud”235

Bibliography241

Index259
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 “Confession,” hymn by Christopher Lind 38

Fig. 4.1 Photograph of the Rev. H. Ellis and his choir at St. Barnabas
Indian Residential School, Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, 1935,
The General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada,
Photographs: P75-103-S6-156 119
Fig. 4.2 Photograph, Girl’s Choir of St. John’s Indian Residential
School in Wabasca, Alberta, 1963, The General
Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, Photographs:
P7528-95120
Fig. 5.1 Retranslation of “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” 135
Fig. 5.2 “El Espíritu de Dios,” traditional Latin American corito154
Fig. 6.1 Music for Las Posadas as sung at Holy Trinity, first two doors 175
Fig. 6.2 Music for Las Posadas as sung at Holy Trinity, last door and
final chorus 176
Fig. 6.3 “The Midwife’s Carol,” Hymn by Ian Sowton and Becca Whitla 183

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Flipping the Song Bird

Singing in Christian contexts has always involved the embodied action of

particular peoples. From the earliest days, Christians have sung their faith
to express their religious zeal and distinguish themselves from their cul-
tural surroundings by singing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”
(Ephesians 5:19). Music (and singing) was understood to be a gift from
God which could enflame human religious passions and enable praise of
God. Augustine of Hippo, for instance, writes in an oft-quoted passage
from his fourth-century Confessions, “How copiously I wept at your hymns
and canticles, how intensely was I moved by the lovely harmonies of your
singing Church! Those voices flooded my ears and the truth was distilled
into my heart until it overflowed in loving devotion; my tears ran down,
and I was the better for them.”1 The medieval mystic, theologian, and
composer, Hildegard of Bingen, was inspired to write down her visionary
insights, including music, through an all-consuming process: “heaven was
opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my
whole brain and inflamed my whole heart and my whole breast.”2 In a
similar vein, sixteenth-century reformer, Martin Luther, believed in the
power and goodness of music so much so that he felt incapable of

1
Augustine, “Book 9, Chapter (6) 14” in The Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding. (New
York: New City Press, 1997), 220.
2
Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist
Press, 1990), 59.

© The Author(s) 2020 1

B. Whitla, Liberation, (De)Coloniality, and Liturgical Practices,
New Approaches to Religion and Power,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52636-8_1
2 B. WHITLA

comprehending its magnitude. “I would certainly like to praise music with

all my heart as the excellent gift of God which it is and to commend it to
everyone,” he wrote, “but I am so overwhelmed by the diversity and mag-
nitude of its virtue and benefits that I can find neither beginning nor end
or method for my discourse. … For who can comprehend it all?”3
At the same time, singing has also often been viewed as threatening or
even dangerous, especially in Christian contexts. Powerful historical voices
have articulated suspicion and distrust of singing (and music) precisely
because of its embodied power. For instance, though he clearly recognized
and appreciated the power of music, Augustine also expressed discomfort
with the passionate stirrings it elicited and the ways music was used in
pursuit of more sensual Dionysian—and morally suspect—purposes.
Liturgical theologian Don Saliers notes that this discord manifested itself
in Augustine’s attitudes to music and continued to resonate throughout
history. He summarizes this development as follows:

In his Confessions we overhear his attraction to the sound that made him
weep, yet that he knows also may distract him from the Word itself. This
suspicion of music has also been part of Christian liturgical tradition, again
surfacing in the Protestant Reformation with the so-called ‘left wing’ tradi-
tions represented most austerely by Quaker silence. The sensual character of
music and its emotional power over human beings was noticed especially in
the neo-Platonic strands of Christian sensibility and theology.4

This tug between what could be broadly characterized as the body and
the mind resurfaces throughout European Christian history. Early
Christian discourses that were suspicious of music’s emotional impact—
and everything associated with it, including nature, women, and the
body—were reinforced by the Cartesian privileging of the mind over the
body in the seventeenth century and the entrenchment of the individual-
istic, rationalist, patriarchal ideals of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth
century. As a result, hymns which were judged to be expressions of the
rational/intellectual/mind were understood to be superior to hymns

3
Martin Luther, “Preface to Gerog Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae,” in Luther’s Works,
American Edition: Volume 53—Liturgy and Hymns, Ulrich S. Leupold (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1965), 321–22.
4
Don Saliers, “Liturgical Musical Formation,” in Liturgy and Music: Lifetime Learning,
ed. Robin A. Leaver and Joyce Ann Zimmerman (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press,
1998), 385.
 1 INTRODUCTION: FLIPPING THE SONG BIRD 3

which were perceived to be more embodied and emotional, or passionate

expressions of the heart.5
This suspicion of singing in its more embodied forms was exported
with European ideas and cultural paradigms in the colonial/imperial proj-
ects of Europe post-1492. At the same time, and partly because of its
recognized power, hymns were used as a tool of the modernist/civilizing-­
cultural/colonial project to impose Christianity throughout the world.
The canons of Western European and Anglo North Atlantic hymnody
were understood to be the most appropriate modes of congregational
singing. As a result, and also because of the suspicion against more embod-
ied modes of singing, songs and musical traditions from outside these
canons were often stigmatized. They were associated with the body, the
sensual/erotic, the “primitive,” and the passionate. As European cultural
expressions, Christian hymns were understood to represent the pinnacle of
human achievement.
In fact, in the Canadian Protestant churches of my inquiry—the United
and Anglican Churches of Canada—the pervasive authority given to the
inherited canons of Western European and Anglo North Atlantic hym-
nody in congregational singing still thwarts embodied congregational par-
ticipation. It impedes the full expression of diverse and complex cultural
identities which are, in my view, part of our imago dei. As a result, this
impediment actually undermines God’s gift to us; we are prevented from
fully expressing and experiencing God’s image in us.
Instead, congregational singing can embody a liberating praxis that
serves to unmask these Western European and Anglo North Atlantic colo-
nial forces—empire at the heart of song. A liberating praxis of congrega-
tional singing both challenges the suspicion against singing as an embodied
action and aims to reclaim it from the domination of pervasive Western

5
A culmination of this distrust is exhibited in the rigid belief that music must always be
subordinated to the Word and was exemplified by sixteenth-century Swiss reformer Huldreich
Zwingli who completely banned music from public worship. Ibid., 386. Zwingli’s austere
approach did not generally take hold, but the impulse to control and constrain music
remained a strong thread in ecclesial practices. For example, French reformer John Calvin
distrusted music’s power due to its potential to “greatly turn or bend in any direction the
morals of men.” John Calvin, “Epistle to the Reader” from Cinquante Pseaumes en Français
par Clem. Marot (1543), in David Music, ed. and comp., Hymnology: A Collection of Source
Readings (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996), 66. A denominational imprint may
also be discerned in the degree of distrust; contrast the Calvinistic focus on psalm singing, for
instance, with a more Wesleyan allowance for an engagement with the affections.
4 B. WHITLA

European Anglo North Atlantic cultures in liturgy. It advocates a partici-

patory embodied spirit-infused practice of congregational singing.
Liberating singing, animated by the Holy Spirit, thus creates new spaces
for the inclusion of the wide array of cultural traditions that are either
ignored presently, relegated to the exotic, or segregated away from the
mainstream—in other words, for the diverse polycultural, multilingual,
multiethnic expressions of God’s image in us.6
These diverse and often marginalized expressions help us reclaim sing-
ing as a profoundly embodied act which can usher in an experience of the
Divine and contribute to a deeply spiritual experience as the corporate
body of Christ reverberates.7 This passionate, powerful, sensual, unequiv-
ocally physical, and body-centered ritual activity is thus both profoundly
incarnational and communal. It is this experience of community—of sing-
ing in relation with each other—that allows us to experience the Divine
within and among us when we sing as part of the body of Christ. Initiated
by drawing or “inspiring” breath—ruach in Hebrew or pneuma in Greek—
into ourselves, we activate our vocal cords by pushing the air back out
through our mouths into the world. From this space, the liberating action
of the Holy Spirit invites us to be open to the transforming and creative
power of our collective action as we re-enact and participate in God’s
original and ongoing action of creation. Together the human and the
Divine become eschatological co-workers, building and embodying God’s
kin-dom through the deepest kind of concrete engagement, simultane-
ously listening and “speaking” in our sung expressions, feeling, and
breathing together, mutually attentive in the song and its singing.8 Our

6
Polycultural refers positively to the multiple cultures present in many contexts. In con-
texts outside Canada, the term multicultural is often used to describe this dynamic. In the
Canadian context, however, multiculturalism was adopted as an official government policy
by the federal government under Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1971. We return to a critical analy-
sis of this notion of multiculturalism in the Canadian context in Chap. 3.
7
Divine is capitalized throughout when I am referring to Christian experience of the ulti-
mate. It is not capitalized when it is an adjective or in a direct quotation.
8
I use Kin-dom, after Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. Ada María Isaisi-Díaz, “Kin-Dom of God: A
Mujerista Proposal,” in In Our Own Voices: Latino/a Renditions of Theology, ed. Beahamín
Valentín (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2010), 171–89. Isasi-Díaz insists that the mujerista
“proyecto histórico” includes an “unfolding of what is called ‘the kingdom of God’” which
rejects “present oppressive systems and institutions” and encourages the flourishing of libera-
tion. Liberation along mujerista lines is: deeply praxical, rooted in a “‘doing,’ a way of claim-
ing our right to think, to know critically”; communal and accountable; “embedded in a
‘grassroots ecumenism’ that skirts traditional doctrinal purity and embraces diversity”; and
 1 INTRODUCTION: FLIPPING THE SONG BIRD 5

personal vocalizations are transformed into a collective action that is one

of the primary modes of embodied ritual expression, integrating our whole
selves—our bodies, minds, and spirits.
A liberating approach begins with a recognition that we sing with our
bodies and in community. It insists that all are welcome to sing; all voices
regardless of training or timbre are enjoined to praise God. It confronts
the reality that our bodies are not abstract entities; they/we are situated in
particular historical, geographical, and cultural locations, times, and eccle-
sial spaces. We are formed by the concrete circumstances in which we find
ourselves. Our singing reveals something about who we are, and it also
invites us to express our responses to our settings, articulating who we can
become and how we understand the divine intent for us.
I would locate such liberating singing praxes within the long line of
liberationist theologians who choose and affirm the embodied participa-
tory nature of the work of the people. These theologians are opposed to
“hierarchical structures of power [which] have in many cases alienated the
people’s participation in liturgy and worship, and have walled them off
into a state of being no more than receivers of the holy things.”9 Spirit
driven, such a liberating praxis witnesses to people’s concrete lived experi-
ence just as it illuminates God’s work in the midst of that reality. It also
forms and enfolds the participants into a vocal community prepared (or
“conscientized”) for the work of liberation.10 As such, it affirms the collec-
tive experience of the people as a place for doing theology, as a locus theo-
logicus, drawing on the embodied knowledge acquired in the struggles
and joys of daily living. When people sing thus engaged in a social praxis
of liberation their very act of singing is a living out of God’s image in us.
We then more fully express and form our identities, enabling the

personal and political at the same time, 178–79. For her, “the deep nosotras/nosotros made
possible by the ties of familia, the mutuality and reciprocity it entails, is at the heart of the
new world order that is intrinsic in the Gospel proclamation, which is precisely why we
believe kin-dom of God—famila de Dios—can function as a metaphor for what Jesus referred
to as the “kingdom of God,” 182. I am aware that notions of family can be problematic,
especially for those who have experienced violence within the family. But her insistence on
mutuality and reciprocity, as well as praxis, invites a reconfiguring of notions of family—or
kingdom—to be truly inclusive and free from violence.
9
Cláudio Carvalhaes, “Liturgy and Postcolonialism: An Introduction,” in Liturgy in
Postcolonial Perspectives: Only One is Holy, ed. Cláudio Carvalhaes (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015), 4.
10
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Herder
and Herder, 1971).
6 B. WHITLA

t­ ransformative purposes of liberation to emerge and be actualized, all ani-

mated by the liberating action of the Holy Spirit.

Methodology and Outline

In order to examine the multiple ways in which congregational singing
can become liberating, I work with liberationist, decolonial, and postcolo-
nial frameworks to analyze the implications of the colonizing legacy of
Western European and Anglo North Atlantic hymnody in liturgy. Each of
these intellectual traditions represents vast and deep histories and trajecto-
ries. I draw on them with appreciation for their rich inheritances.
A clarification is in order at this point. I understand liberating praxis
along the lines of Paulo Freire and others as “reflection and action directed
at the structures to be transformed.”11 For Freire, liberation entails a con-
scientization which provokes people to act to change their social context
in order to dismantle structures of poverty and oppression. This Freirian
bedrock undergirds my interpretation of liberation. But my understanding
of liberation is also enriched by communities of liberation theologians.
They have insisted on unmasking, interrogating, and unsettling the social
forces of oppression which are predicated on theological understandings
that privilege the rich and neutralize the poor, preventing them from gain-
ing agency to struggle against those same oppressive social structures.
Their aim has been to create the conditions so that the poor, the marginal-
ized, and the excluded can gain their historical sense of agency (praxis) so
that they can contribute to the establishment of a society that more closely
resembles the divine promise of the realm of God.
Liberation theologians in their multiple expressions drew on the
Marxist notion of praxis but reconfigured it to include the reflective act for
liberation inspired by the gospel, understood to be the transformation of
history by working to build the kin-dom of God.12 In their context, it first
took on a specifically classist approach which was eventually expanded to
include concerns about racialization and gender. More recent liberationist
approaches have included questions of ethno-cultural background, sexual
orientation, and (dis)ability. I am indebted to all these understandings of

Ibid., 120.
11

Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson
12

(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973); Juan Luis Segundo, Liberation of Theology, trans. John Drury
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1976).
 1 INTRODUCTION: FLIPPING THE SONG BIRD 7

praxis. My own understanding also includes a decolonial impetus toward

a disentangling of coloniality within present social structures and dynam-
ics both inside and outside the church. Colonizing strategies are thus
unmasked—as operative in the manner in which people interrelate and
as embedded in the interconnected social markers of class, race, gender,
and so on.13
For Christians committed to struggles of liberation from oppression, a
liberating singing praxis includes a commitment to struggle against all
forces that dehumanize in singing. Through critical analysis of songs and
their singing, liberating singing can contribute to building God’s kin-dom
of justice and radical love. Such a praxis draws on the inheritance of libera-
tion theologies in emphasizing, among other things: the particular con-
texts and concrete historical reality of the oppressed or marginalized; the
importance of self-critical awareness, consciousness-raising, and narrative
in liberating processes; the power of the community and the church as
liberating forces; the experience of the people as an epistemological source
for theology, a locus theologicus; and the rooting of a liberating praxis in
“life as a whole as a new way of being and doing” in history.14
After more than twenty-five years of animating and studying congrega-
tional and community singing in Canada, Cuba, the USA, and elsewhere,
I have come to learn that the realities of life for the people who gather to
sing are extremely diverse, representing many cultures, languages, social
and economic classes, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, and so on.
These messy, intercultural, often conflictual, and socially contested reali-
ties are always present when we sing. They also shape and condition the
way people sing and why they sing. Inspired by liberationist thinkers, I
have sought to lift up these experiences—the experience of people’s daily
lives—along with the cultural traditions of the people, as a place for doing
13
Briefly put, coloniality can be described along the lines of decolonial scholars as the
ubiquitous residue and ongoing manifestations of the modern-colonial capitalist world-sys-
tem, the superstructure which encompasses the co-constitutive and global forces of colonial-
ism, modernity and capitalism. The notion of coloniality as applied to congregational singing
will be developed in subsequent chapters, especially Chaps. 3 and 4.
14
Rebecca S. Chopp, “Toward Praxis: A Method for Liberation Theology,” in The Praxis
of Suffering: An Interpretation of Liberation and Political Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis,
1986), 139, 143. These points will be elaborated upon throughout the book. For founda-
tional treatment of these theme, see Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation; Segundo, Liberation
of Theology. I would argue that liberating praxis also includes liberation from forces of capital-
ism, individualism, and consumerism, which threaten not only the very fabric of our com-
munities but also the delicate fabric of the interconnected web of God’s creation.
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theology. Over time, these theologies and my relationships in a variety of

communities have helped to shape how I have come to understand my
vocation as a song enlivener or song leader.15 The overarching methodol-
ogy of my thesis reflects these multiple influences and relationships. It is
what I call a syncopated liberating approach.
Another word of clarity is in order here; while I would locate my work
in the realm of practical theology, I do not see it as ethnographic. Recent
scholarship has productively turned toward ethnographic approaches,
especially in the realm of practical theology, including in analyses of church
music.16 These approaches often take a participant-observer stance, with
clearly defined fieldwork and interview procedures outlined from the out-
set. In my work, I did not set out as a participant-observer, or even as a
researcher, to “go to the places where people live, work, or pray in order
to take in firsthand the experience of group life and social interactions.”17
Rather my methodological approach draws from my own lived experience
recalled from memory. I reflect on this experience, in conversation with
multiple people, scholars, and communities, with a view to work toward
transformation, in this case, liberating congregation singing. It is, to
repeat, a liberation-oriented praxis-based approach. Like some ethno-
graphic (and auto-ethnographic) approaches, my work does draw on nar-
rative, as I recall the events upon which I reflect. In addition, conversations
with friends and colleagues animate my work, as sites for shared reflection.
But these narratives and conversations are part of the living out of praxis
rather than structured observations or interviews based on fieldwork, in
the ethnographic sense. In every case, when I cite a conversation, I have

15
I appreciate Michael Hawn’s term “song enlivener.” I use “song leader” along these
lines. Hawn, “Chapter Eight: The Church Musician as Enlivener” in Gather Into One:
Praying and Singing Globally, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2003).
16
Early examples of an ethnographic approach in church music are C. Michael Hawn’s One
Bread, One Body: Exploring Cultural Diversity in Worship, (Wisconsin: Alban Institute,
2003), in which he used a participant-observer approach; and Gather Into One: Praying and
Singing Globally, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2003) which features several inter-
views with global song leaders from around the world. More recently, scholars with an eth-
nographic approach in Christian congregational music have been gathering for a bi-annual
conference at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxford, UK. Scholars in this field include:
Monique Ingalls, Carolyn Landau, Tom Wagner, Mark Porter, Anna Nekola, and Jonathan
Dueck, among others (see bibliography). See: Christian Congregational Music, accessed,
March 8, 2020, https://congregationalmusic.org/
17
Mary Clark Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice: An Introduction (Cleveland:
Pilgrim Press, 2008), 25.
 1 INTRODUCTION: FLIPPING THE SONG BIRD 9

shared the manuscript with my conversation partners for their feedback

and approval.
As such, this syncopated mode therefore reflects the rhythm of the lib-
erating praxis I try to live out as I move between spaces, between my privi-
lege and the “other” spaces of those who are marginalized, as well as in
relationship, both personally and professionally.18 It also resonates with my
interdisciplinary scholarly approach which draws on multiple currents to
identify and illuminate the interconnectedness of the issues I am raising. A
syncopated rhythm interrupts the “normative” beat of the status quo
while simultaneously responding to the heartbeat of life, with its provoca-
tive offbeat interjections that transform the overarching rhythmic
structures.
Methodologically speaking, this praxis is not constrained by one
approach or current, but emerges from the weaving together of multiple
beats to form a rhythmic structure in which rhythms play off each other,
often in tension, but also as a coherent frame/methodology. It allows dis-
tinct discourses to cooperate in articulating new unaddressed sets of issues
which continue to unfold, not as finished products or neatly packaged
theories but as unfolding multiple processes. Much like the human experi-
ence of life, it entails an ongoing praxical commitment toward liberating
action and reflection that does not foreclose itself or pretend to arrive at a
definitive endpoint. A syncopated liberating approach is multi-­factorial,
contestatory, and strategic. It entails a stance that depends on ongoing
processes of self-interrogation in relation to power, struggles against sys-
tems that oppress, and accompanies those who are on the margins.
The foundational beat that lies underneath this book is a syncopation
between human and divine impulses. As such, a syncopated liberating
praxis taps into the energy and movement of the Holy Spirit. It follows
that when leadership does not create the conditions for the people to sing
or when it turns their singing against God’s intention for humanity, it is
stifling the Spirit’s liberating breath. By liberating congregational singing,
the people collaborate and conspire with God’s created intent for life,
while working against forces that dehumanize. Undergirding my vocation
18
The idea of a syncopated liberating approach was suggested by Néstor Medina. Néstor
Medina, Email correspondence with the author (25 October 2016). In Chap. 3, issues of
identity and how they impact song leadership, among other things, will be explored in far
more detail. However, since I am raising the question of privilege and “other” spaces here, I
note, for now, that I am a university-educated, Anglo-Euro-Canadian settler, middle-class,
cisgender, able-bodied, adult woman, and a mother.
10 B. WHITLA

as a song leader—and this scholarly reflection on that work—is a deep

commitment to make space in which the people feel empowered to sing.
This work is rooted in my life; I draw from my particular experience
with particular communities in the city of Toronto. However, it is my
hope that practitioners and church music scholars from many contexts will
find something here to help them dismantle coloniality and liberate con-
gregational singing and worship where they are. Similarly, both the meth-
odology and proposed techniques could be expanded for use in
interrogating coloniality in broader church structures and activities. Such
rigorous ongoing critical engagements with scholars from a variety of dis-
ciplines, including especially ethno/musicology and post- and decolonial
studies, have the potential to transform the ways we think and act.
There is also a fundamental tension in my project between affirming
and drawing from grassroots approaches and knowledges and engaging in
critical discourse with “big theory.” To address this tension, the book has
a spiral structure in which my own experience continually draws us back to
concrete community contexts, rooting the analysis in practice. With each
circling back the theoretical analysis is also opened up and rendered more
complex. My goal is that the questions raised in one chapter will be
answered, or at least wrestled with, in the next. For me, this spiral of
engagement is ongoing. This work continues as I teach, lead worship and
singing, and research and reflect on these issues.
With all of this in mind, Chap. 2 begins with praxis by reflecting on and
analyzing three seminary chapel services in order to propose some prelimi-
nary rubrics for liberating congregational song leading. Here I also situate
my project within the field of church music scholarship and begin my own
self-reflective and praxical journey.
Chapter 3 suggests ways to unmask our identities by examining some
of the processes of identification and contextualization that hinder the
creation of a robust, embodied, and accountable liberating approach to
congregational singing. Insisting that we must always begin with our-
selves, I examine questions of power and deconstruct the “coloniality of
being” in ourselves, our relationships, our communities, and our institu-
tions.19 Several techniques are considered, drawn from a range of post and
decolonial thinkers, as well as critical race theorists: decolonizing

19
Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3
(March/May 2007): accessed July 25, 2018, http://www.decolonialtranslation.com/eng-
lish/maldonado-on-the-coloniality-of-being.pdf
 1 INTRODUCTION: FLIPPING THE SONG BIRD 11

autobiographies, unsuturing, unbleaching, engaging intermixture, and

unforgetting. In order to begin to liberate our singing we must under-
stand the superstructures of these contexts, which means we need to con-
front the coloniality of our denominations and broader contexts.
Chapters 4 and 5 include textual and some musical analyses of hymns
which are generally considered part of the hymnic canons in the Anglican
and United Churches of Canada. The expression of the complex cultural
identities explored in Chap. 3 is impeded by the dominance of the inher-
ited canons of Western European Anglo North Atlantic hymnody. Chapter
4 sets out to unmask the ways in which hymns from the Victorian era
preserve, reproduce, and reinscribe ideologies and theologies of empire, in
order to expose coloniality in music. To help in this analysis, I draw on
current debates in the field of ethnomusicology in which scholars are
beginning to dismantle eurocentrism in the study of music.
Chapter 5 problematizes the forthright unmasking of empire at the
heart of hymnody from Chap. 4 by drawing on post- and decolonial schol-
arship. Exploring Homi Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry, hybridity, and
Third Space in this and the following chapter, I show that these herme-
neutical moves help to deconstruct coloniality and point toward liberating
potential, especially by unmasking and interrogating the pervasive cultural
influence of European colonialism and imperialism. Yet, they are also cir-
cumscribed by the colonial gaze, Eurocentric epistemological frames, and
overly abstract deconstructive thinking. Meanwhile, decolonial scholars
are more interested in affirming the agencies of those from the Global
South and (re)claiming other ways of knowing that are “de-linked” from
Europe.20 Both currents, the first deconstructive, the second more con-
structive, offer rich perspectives for the task of complexifying the method-
ology of the previous chapter.
Along these lines, Chap. 5 opens up the themes of Chap. 4 by examin-
ing how marginalized peoples sing the hymns of empire as well as their
own songs. By drawing on the decolonial categories of “epistemic disobe-
dience” and “other ways of knowing,” this chapter analyzes the dynamics
of congregational singing, along with the texts and performance practices
of two “colonial” hymns: “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” and “How
Great Thou Art.” What becomes evident is that hymns clothed in the

20
Walter D. Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial
Freedom,” Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 7–8 (2009): 178, accessed July 25, 2018,
http://waltermignolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/epistemicdisobedience-2.pdf
12 B. WHITLA

garments of European hymnody can be inverted (flipped) by the people

who sing them, subverting theologies of empire and colonialism and
becoming instruments of resistance and sources of forbearance, strength,
and hope. To conclude, a song from the Global South/Majority World,
“El Espíritu de Dios,” offers an opportunity to explore how fragile spaces
have already been opened up by those from the underside.
In Chap. 6, the theoretical framings of both post- and decolonial schol-
ars are further developed, often in tension with each other, by examining
two Christmas events at the Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown
Toronto. By comparing and contrasting the church’s pageant, “The
Christmas Story,” with intercultural practices from the community’s
Christmas Eve service—the Mexican and Central American celebration of
Las Posadas and the singing of a new Christmas Carol, “The Midwife’s
Carol,” I examine how decolonial thinking goes beyond postcolonial
frames. Voices that challenge the dominance of Eurocentric worldviews
through other ways of knowing and being in song can be fruitfully read
along decolonial lines as Walter Mignolo’s border thinking and my recon-
ceptualization of it as border singing.
Chapter 7 extends border thinking/singing beyond Mignolo’s para-
digm to encompass the multiplicity and complexity of our identities and
our intermixing in congregational singing. The singing of the
H.E.R.E. Local 75 Union Choir as a locus for doing theology through
song elicits germinative principles for a liberating liturgical theology, ani-
mated by the Holy Spirit. Despite the dangerous daily lived reality of choir
members, the choir embodies a sacramental praxis and shows how the
work and grace of the Holy Spirit can guide us through the risks of dis-
mantling coloniality toward liberating our singing. Such a praxis can lead
to a change of heart and life for those involved and calls the churches to
be open to their own conversion.
It is important to emphasize again that all this work is rooted in my life;
working toward liberating congregational singing is a critical self-reflective
process. I wanted to find words to articulate what I have been experienc-
ing over the years in my singing, song leading, and church communities.
My own faith journey, a journey riddled with doubt, has been sustained
and renewed in encounters along the way with people who help me to see
the hundreds of tiny epiphanies—fleeting glimpses of the Divine—that
interweave into the fabric of my conversion to this syncopated liberating
vision. I have come to understand my vocation as but a part of the work
of the whole community of God which plunges “itself into [the] love that
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 Archery, skipping, horse exercise, croquet, the hand-swing, the fly-
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girl, every part of the body being put into action by it. Horse exercise
is splendid for a girl; it improves the figure amazingly—it is most
exhilarating and amusing; moreover, it gives her courage and makes
her self-reliant. Croquet develops and improves the muscles of the
arms, beautifies the complexion, strengthens the back, and throws
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invented. Croquet, in the bright sunshine, with the winds of heaven
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philosophers whose names are emblazoned in story. Hand-swing is a
capital exercise for a girl; the whole of the body is thrown into action
by it, and the spine, the shoulders, and the shoulder-blades are
especially benefited. The fly-pole, too, is good exercise for the whole
of the muscles of the body, especially of the legs and the arms.
Skating is as exhilarating as a glass of champagne, but will do her far
more good! Skating exhilarates the spirits, improves the figure, and
makes a girl balance and carry herself well; it is a most becoming
exercise for her, and is much in every way to be commended.
Moreover, skating gives a girl courage and self-reliance Dancing,
followed as a rational amusement, causes a free circulation of the
blood, and, provided it does not induce her to sit up late at night, is
most beneficial.
339. If dancing be so beneficial, why are balls such fruitful
sources of coughs, of colds, and consumptions?
On many accounts. They induce young ladies to sit up late at night;
they cause them to dress more lightly than they are accustomed to
do; and thus thinly clad, they leave their homes while the weather is
perhaps piercing cold, to plunge into a suffocating, hot ball-room,
made doubly injurious by the immense number of lights, which
consume the oxygen intended for the due performance of the healthy
function of the lungs. Their partners, the brilliancy of the scene, and
the music excite their nerves to undue, and thus to unnatural action,
and what is the consequence? Fatigue, weakness, hysterics, and
extreme depression follow. They leave the heated ball-room, when
the morning has far advanced, to breathe the bitterly cold and
frequently damp air of a winter’s night, and what is the result?
Hundreds die of consumption who might otherwise have lived.
Ought there not, then, to be a distinction between a ball at midnight
and a dance in the evening?
340. But still, would you have a girl brought up to forego the
pleasures of a ball?
If a parent prefer her so-called pleasures to her health, certainly
not; to such a mother I do not address myself.
341. Have you any remarks to make on singing, or on reading
aloud?
Before a mother allows her daughter to take lessons in singing, she
should ascertain that there be no actual disease of the lungs, for if
there be, it will probably excite it into action; but if no disease exist,
singing or reading aloud is very conducive to health. Public singers
are seldom known to die of consumption. Singing expands the chest,
improves the pronunciation, enriches the voice for conversation,
strengthens the lungs, and wards off many of their diseases.

EDUCATION.

342. Do you approve of corporal punishment in schools?

I do not. I consider it to be decidedly injurious both to body and
mind. Is it not painful to witness the pale cheeks and the dejected
looks of those boys who are often flogged? If their tempers are mild,
their spirits are broken; if their dispositions are at all obstinate, they
become hardened and willful, and are made little better than brutes.
[285]
A boy who is often flogged loses that noble ingenuousness and
fine sensibility so characteristic of youth. He looks upon his school as
his prison, and his master as his jailer, and, as he grows up to
manhood, hates and despises the man who has flogged him. Corporal
punishment is revolting, disgusting, and demoralizing to the boy,
and is degrading to the school-master as a man and as a Christian.
If school-masters must flog, let them flog their own sons. If they
must ruin the tempers, the dispositions, and the constitutions of
boys, they have more right to practice upon their own than on other
people’s children! Oh that parents would raise—and that without any
uncertain sound—their voices against such abominations, and the
detestable cane would soon be banished the school-room! “I am
confident that no boy,” says Addison, “who will not be allured by
letters without blows, will never be brought to anything with them. A
great or good mind must necessarily be the worse for such
indignities; and it is a sad change to lose of its virtue for the
improvement of its knowledge. No one has gone through what they
call a great school, but must have remembered to have seen children
of excellent and ingenuous natures (as have afterward appeared in
their manhood). I say, no man has passed through this way of
education but must have seen an ingenuous creature expiring with
shame, with pale looks, beseeching sorrow, and silent tears, throw up
its honest eyes, and kneel on its tender knees to an inexorable
blockhead, to be forgiven the false quantity of a word in making a
Latin verse. The child is punished, and the next day he commits a
like crime, and so a third, with the same consequence. I would fain
ask any reasonable man whether this lad, in the simplicity of his
native innocence, full of shame, and capable of any impression from
that grace of soul, was not fitter for any purpose in this life than after
that spark of virtue is extinguished in him, though he is able to write
twenty verses in an evening?”
How often is corporal punishment resorted to at school because
the master is in a passion, and he vents his rage upon the poor
school-boy’s unfortunate back!
Oh! the mistaken notion that flogging will make a bad-behaved
boy a good boy; it has the contrary effect. “‘I dunno how ’tis, sir,’ said
an old farm-laborer, in reply to a question from his clergyman
respecting the bad behavior of his children, ‘I dunno how ’tis; I beats
’em till they’re black and blue, and when they won’t kneel down to
pray I knocks ’em down, and yet they ain’t good.’”[286]
In an excellent article in Temple Bar (November, 1864) on
flogging in the army, the following sensible remarks occur: “In nearly
a quarter of a century’s experience with soldiers, the writer has
always, and without a single exception, found flogging makes a good
man bad, and a bad man worse.” With equal truth it may be said
that, without a single exception, flogging makes a good boy bad, and
a bad boy worse. How many men owe their ferocity to the canings
they received when school-boys! The early floggings hardened and
soured them, and blunted their sensibility.
Dr. Arnold of Rugby, one of the best school-masters that England
ever produced, seldom caned a boy—not more than once or twice
during the half year; but when he did cane him, he charged for the
use of the cane each time in the bill, in order that the parents might
know how many times their son had been punished. At some of our
public schools nowadays a boy is caned as many times in a morning
as the worthy doctor would have caned him during the whole half
year; but then the doctor treated the boys as gentlemen, and trusted
much to their honor; but now many school-masters trust much to
fear, little to honor, and treat them as brute beasts.
It might be said that the discipline of a school cannot be
maintained unless the boys be frequently caned—that it must be
either caning or expulsion. I deny these assertions. Dr. Arnold was
able to conduct his school with honor to himself, and with immense
benefit to the rising generation, without either frequent canings or
expulsions. The humane plan, however, requires at first both trouble
and patience; and trouble some school-masters do not like, and
patience they do not possess; the use of the cane is quick, sharp, and
at the time effective.
If caning be ever necessary, which it might occasionally be, for the
telling of lies for instance, or for gross immorality, let the head
master himself be the only one to perform the operation, but let him
not be allowed to delegate it to others. A law ought in all public
schools to be in force to that effect. High time that something was
done to abate such disgraceful practices.
Never should a school-master, or any one else, be allowed, on any
pretense whatever, to strike a boy upon his head. Boxing of the ears
has sometimes caused laceration of the drum of the ear, and
consequent partial deafness for life. Boxing of the ears injures the
brain, and therefore the intellect.
 It might be said that I am traveling out of my province in making
remarks on corporal chastisement in schools. But, with deference, I
reply that I am strictly in the path of duty. My office is to inform you
of everything that is detrimental to your children’s health and
happiness; and corporal punishment is assuredly most injurious
both to their health and happiness. It is the bounden duty of every
man, and especially of every medical man, to lift up his voice against
the abominable, disgusting, and degrading system of flogging, and to
warn parents of the danger and the mischief of sending boys to those
schools where flogging is permitted.
343. Have you any observations to make on the selection of a
female boarding-school?
Home education, where it be practicable, is far preferable to
sending a girl to school; as at home, her health, her morals, and her
household duties can be attended to much more effectually than
from home. Moreover, it is a serious injury to a girl, in more ways
than one, to separate her from her own brothers; they very much lose
their affection for each other, and mutual companionship (so
delightful and beneficial between brothers and sisters) is severed.
If home education be not practicable, great care must be taken in
making choice of a school. Boarding-school education requires great
reformation. Accomplishments, superficial acquirements, and
brainwork are the order of the day; health is very little studied. You
ought, in the education of your daughters, to remember that they, in
a few years, will be the wives and the mothers of England; and if they
have not health and strength, and a proper knowledge of household
duties to sustain their characters, what useless, listless wires and
mothers they will make!
Remember, then, the body and not the mind ought in early life to
be principally cultivated and strengthened, and that the growing
brain will not bear, with impunity, much book learning. The brain of
a schoolgirl is frequently injured by getting up voluminous questions
by rote, that are not of the slightest use or benefit to her or to any one
else. Instead of this ridiculous system, educate a girl to be useful and
self-reliant. “From babyhood they are given to understand that
helplessness is feminine and beautiful; helpfulness, except in certain
received forms of manifestation, unwomanly and ugly. The boys may
do a thousand things which are ‘not proper for little girls.’”[287]
 From her twelfth to her seventeenth year is the most important
epoch of a girl’s existence, as regards her future health, and
consequently, in a great measure, her future happiness; and one in
which, more than at any other period of her life, she requires a
plentiful supply of fresh air, exercise, recreation, a variety of
innocent amusements, and an abundance of good nourishment,
more especially fresh meat; if therefore you have determined on
sending your girl to school, you must ascertain that the pupils have
as much plain, wholesome, nourishing food as they can eat,[288] that
the school be situated in a healthy spot, that it be well drained, that
there be a large play-ground attached to it, that the young people are
allowed plenty of exercise in the open air—indeed, that at least one-
third of the day is spent there in croquet, skipping, archery,
battledore and shuttlecock, gardening, walking, running, etc.
Take care that the school-rooms are well ventilated, that they are
not overcrowded, and that the pupils are allowed chairs to sit upon,
and not those abominations—forms and stools. If you wish to try the
effect of them upon yourself, sit for a couple of hours without stirring
upon a form or upon a stool, and take my word for it you will insist
that forms and stools be banished forever from the school-room.
Assure yourself that the pupils are compelled to rise early in the
morning, and that they retire early to rest: that each young lady has a
separate bed,[289] and that many are not allowed to sleep in the same
room, and that the apartments are large and well ventilated. In fine,
their health and their morals ought to be preferred far above all their
accomplishments.
344. They use, in some schools, straight-backed chairs, to make a
girl sit upright and to give strength to her back: do you approve of
them?
Certainly not. The natural and the graceful curve of the back is not
the curve of a straight-backed chair. Straight-backed chairs are
instruments of torture, and are more likely to make a girl crooked
than to make her straight. Sir Astley Cooper ridiculed straight-
backed chairs, and well he might. It is always well for a mother to try,
for some considerable time, such ridiculous inventions upon herself
before she experiments upon her unfortunate daughter. The position
is most unnatural. I do not approve of a girl lounging and lolling on a
sofa; but, if she be tired and wants to rest herself, let her, like any
other reasonable being, sit upon a comfortable ordinary chair.
If you want her to be straight, let her be made strong; and if she is
to be strong, she must use plenty of exercise and exertion, such as
drilling, dancing, skipping, archery, croquet, hand-swinging, horse
exercise, swimming, bowls, etc. This is the plan to make her back
straight and her muscles strong. Why should we bring up a girl
differently from a boy? Muscular gymnastic exercises and health-
giving exertion are unladylike, forsooth!

HOUSEHOLD WORK FOR GIRLS.

345. Do you recommend household work as a means of health for

my daughter?
Decidedly. Whatever you do, do not make a fine lady of her, or she
will become puny and delicate, listless and miserable. A girl, let her
station be what it might, ought, as soon as she be old enough, to
make her own bed. There is no exercise to expand the figure and to
beautify the shape better than bed-making. Let her make tidy her
own room. Let her use her hands and her arms. Let her, to a great
extent, be self-reliant, and let her wait upon herself. There is nothing
vulgar in her being useful. Let me ask, Of what use are many girls of
the present day? They are utterly useless. Are they happy? No, for the
want of employment they are miserable—I mean, bodily
employment, household work. Many girls, nowadays, unfortunately,
are made to look upon a pretty face, dress, and accomplishments as
the only things needed! And, when they do become women and wives
—if ever they do become women and wives—what miserable,
lackadaisical wives, and what senseless, useless mothers they make!

CHOICE OF PROFESSION OR TRADE.

346. What profession or trade would you recommend a boy of a

delicate or of a consumptive habit to follow?
If a youth be delicate, it is a common practice among parents
either to put him to some light in-door trade, or, if they can afford it,
to one of the learned professions. Such a practice is absurd, and
fraught with danger The close confinement of an in-door trade is
highly prejudicial to health. The hard reading requisite to fit a man to
fill, for instance, the sacred office, only increases delicacy of
constitution. The stooping at a desk, in an attorney’s office, is most
trying to the chest. The harass, the anxiety, the disturbed nights, the
interrupted meals, and the intense study necessary to fit a man for
the medical profession, is still more dangerous to health than either
law, divinity, or any in-door trade. “Sir Walter Scott says of the
country surgeon, that he is worse fed and harder wrought than any
one else in the parish, except it be his horse.”[290]
A modern writer, speaking of the life of a medical man, observes:
“There is no career which so rapidly wears away the powers of life,
because there is no other which requires a greater activity of mind
and body. He has to bear the changes of weather, continued fatigue,
irregularity in his meals, and broken rest; to live in the midst of
miasma and contagion. If in the country, he has to traverse
considerable distances on horseback, exposed to wind and storm—to
brave all dangers to go to the relief of suffering humanity. A fearful
truth for medical men has been established by the table of mortality
by Dr. Casper, published in the British Review. Of 1000 members of
the medical profession, 600 died before their sixty-second year;
while of persons leading a quiet life—such as agriculturists or
theologians—the mortality is only 347. If we take 100 individuals of
each of these classes, 43 theologians, 40 agriculturists, 35 clerks, 32
soldiers, will reach their seventieth year: of 100 professors of the
healing art, 24 only will reach that age. They are the sign-posts to
health; they can show the road to old age, but rarely tread it
themselves.”
If a boy, therefore, be of a delicate or of a consumptive habit, an
out-door calling should be advised, such as that of a farmer, of a
tanner, or a land-surveyor; but, if he be of an inferior station of
society, the trade of a butcher may be recommended. Tanners and
butchers are seldom known to die of consumption.
I cannot refrain from reprobating the too common practice among
parents of bringing up their boys to the professions. The anxieties
and the heartaches which they undergo if they do not succeed (and
how can many of them succeed when there is such a superabundance
of candidates?) materially injure their health. “I very much wonder,”
says Addison, “at the humor of parents, who will not rather choose to
place their sons in a way of life where an honest industry cannot but
thrive, than in stations where the greatest probity, learning, and
good sense may miscarry. How many men are country curates, that
might have made themselves aldermen of London by a right
improvement of a smaller sum of money than what is usually laid out
upon a learned education? A sober, frugal person, of slender parts
and a slow apprehension, might have thrived in trade, though he
starves upon physic; as a man would be well enough pleased to buy
silks of one whom he could not venture to feel his pulse. Vagellius is
careful, studious, and obliging, but withal a little thick-skulled; he
has not a single client, but might have had abundance of customers.
The misfortune is, that parents take a liking to a particular
profession, and therefore desire their sons may be of it; whereas, in
so great an affair of life, they should consider the genius and abilities
of their children more than their own inclinations. It is the great
advantage of a trading nation, that there are very few in it so dull and
heavy who may not be placed in stations of life which may give them
an opportunity of making their fortunes. A well-regulated commerce
is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but,
on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to
all its professors. Fleets of merchantmen are so many squadrons of
floating shops, that vend our wares and manufactures in all the
markets of the world, and find out chapmen under both the tropics.”
347. Then, do you recommend a delicate youth to be brought up
either to a profession or to a trade?
Decidedly. There is nothing so injurious for a delicate boy, or for
any one else, as idleness. Work, in moderation, enlivens the spirits,
braces the nerves, and gives tone to the muscles, and thus
strengthens the constitution. Of all miserable people, the idle boy or
the idle man is the most miserable! If you are poor, of course you will
bring him up to some calling; but if you are rich, and your boy is
delicate (if he be not actually in a consumption), you will, if you are
wise, still bring him up to some trade or profession. You will,
otherwise, be making a rod for your own as well as for your son’s
back. Oh, what a blessed thing is work!
 SLEEP.

348. Have you any remarks to make on the sleep of boys and
girls?
Sleeping-rooms are, generally, the smallest in the house, whereas,
for health’s sake, they ought to be the largest. If it be impossible to
have a large bedroom, I should advise a parent to have a dozen or
twenty holes (each about the size of a florin) bored with a center-bit
in the upper part of the chamber-door, and the same number of
holes in the lower part of the door, so as constantly to admit a free
current of air from the passages. If this cannot readily be done, then
let the bedroom door be left ajar all night, a door-chain being on the
door to prevent intrusion; and, in the summer time, during the night,
let the window-sash, to the extent of about two or three inches, be
left open.
If there be a dressing-room next to the bedroom, it will be well to
have the dressing-room window, instead of the bedroom window,
open at night. The dressing-room door will regulate the quantity of
air to be admitted into the bedroom, opening it either little or much,
as the weather might be cold or otherwise.
Fresh air during sleep is indispensable to health.—If a bedroom be
close, the sleep, instead of being calm and refreshing, is broken and
disturbed; and the boy, when he awakes in the morning, feels more
fatigued than when he retired to rest.
If sleep is to be refreshing, the air, then, must be pure, and free
from carbonic acid gas, which is constantly being evolved from the
lungs. If sleep is to be health-giving, the lungs ought to have their
proper food, oxygen,—and not be cheated by giving them instead a
poison, carbonic acid gas.
It would be well for each boy to have a separate room to himself,
and each girl a separate room to herself. If two boys are obliged, from
the smallness of the house, to sleep in one room, and if two girls,
from the same cause, are compelled to occupy the same chamber, by
all means let each one have a separate bed to himself and to herself,
as it is so much more healthy and expedient for both boys and girls to
sleep alone.
 The roof of the bed should be left open—that is to say, the top of
the bedstead ought not be covered with bed furniture, but should be
open to the ceiling, in order to encourage a free ventilation of air. A
bed-curtain may be allowed on the side of the bed where there are
windy currents of air; otherwise bed-curtains and valances ought on
no account to be allowed. They prevent a free circulation of the air. A
youth should sleep on a horse-hair mattress. Such mattresses greatly
improve the figure and strengthen the frame. During the daytime,
provided it does not rain, the windows must be thrown wide open,
and, directly after he has risen from bed, the clothes ought to be
thrown entirely back, in order that they may become, before the bed
be made, well ventilated and purified by the air:
“Do you wish to be healthy?—
Then keep the house sweet;
As soon as you’re up
Shake each blanket and sheet.

Leave the beds to get fresh

On the close-crowded floor;
Let the wind sweep right through—
Open window and door.

The bad air will rush out

As the good air comes in,
Just as goodness is stronger
And better than sin.

Do this, it’s soon done,

In the fresh morning air,—
It will lighten your labor
And lessen your care.

You are weary—no wonder,

There’s weight and there’s gloom
Hanging heavily round
In each overfull room.

Be sure all the trouble

Is profit and gain,
For there’s headache, and heartache,
And fever, and pain,

Hovering round, settling down

 In the closeness and heat:
Let the wind sweep right through
Till the air’s fresh and sweet.

And more cheerful you’ll feel

Through the toil of the day;
More refreshed you’ll awake
When the night’s pass’d away.”[291]

Plants and flowers ought not to be allowed to remain in a chamber

at night. Experiments have proved that plants and flowers take up, in
the daytime, carbonic acid gas (the refuse of respiration), and give off
oxygen (a gas so necessary and beneficial to health), but give out in
the night season a poisonous exhalation.
Early rising cannot be too strongly insisted upon; nothing is more
conducive to health, and thus to long life. A youth is frequently
allowed to spend the early part of the morning in bed, breathing the
impure atmosphere of a bedroom, when he should be up and about,
inhaling the balmy and health-giving breezes of the morning:
“Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed:
The breath of night’s destructive to the hue
Of ev’ry flower that blows. Go to the field,
And ask the humble daisy why it sleeps
Soon as the sun departs? Why close the eyes
Of blossoms infinite, long ere the moon
Her oriental veil puts off? Think why,
Nor let the sweetest blossom Nature boasts
Be thus exposed to night’s unkindly damp.
Well may it droop, and all its freshness lose,
Compell’d to taste the rank and pois’nous steam
Of midnight theater and morning ball.
Give to repose the solemn hour she claims;
And from the forehead of the morning steal
The sweet occasion. Oh! there is a charm
Which morning has, that gives the brow of age
A smack of youth, and makes the lip of youth
Shed perfume exquisite. Expect it not,
Ye who till noon upon a down-bed lie,
Indulging feverish sleep.”[292]

If early rising be commenced in childhood it becomes a habit, and

will then probably be continued through life. A boy ought on no
account to be roused from his sleep; but as soon as he be awake in
the morning, he should be encouraged to rise. Dozing—that state
between sleeping and waking—is injurious; it enervates both body
and mind, and is as detrimental to health as dram-drinking! But if he
rise early, he must go to bed betimes; it is a bad practice to keep him
up until the family retire to rest. He ought, winter and summer, to
seek his pillow by nine o’clock, and should rise as soon as he awakes
in the morning.
Let me urge upon a parent the great importance of not allowing
the chimney of any bedroom, or of any room in the house, to be
stopped, as many are in the habit of doing, to prevent, as they call it,
a draught, but to prevent, as I should call it, health.
349. How many hours of sleep ought a boy to have?
This, of course, will depend upon the exercise he takes; but, on an
average, he should have every night at least eight hours. It is a
mistaken notion that a boy does better with little sleep. Infants,
children, and youths require more than those who are further
advanced in years; hence old people can frequently do with little
sleep. This may in a measure be accounted for from the quantity of
exercise the young take. Another reason may be, the young have
neither pain nor care to keep them awake; while, on the contrary, the
old have frequently one or both:
“Care keeps his watch on every old man’s eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.”[293]

ON THE TEETH AND THE GUMS.

350. What are the best means of keeping the teeth and the gums
in a healthy state?
I would recommend the teeth and the gums to be well brushed
with warm salt and water, in the proportion of one large teaspoonful
of salt to a tumbler of water. I was induced to try the above plan by
the recommendation of an intelligent American writer.[294]
The salt and water should be used every night at bedtime.
The following is an excellent tooth-powder:
 Take of finely-powdered Peruvian Bark;
„ Prepared Coral;
„ Prepared Chalk;
„ Myrrh, of each half an ounce;
„ Orris root, a quarter of an ounce:

Mix them well together in a mortar, and preserve the powder in a wide-mouth
stoppered bottle.
The teeth ought to be well brushed with the above tooth-powder
every morning.
If the teeth be much decayed, and if, in consequence, the breath be
offensive, two ounces of finely-powdered charcoal, well mixed with
the above ingredients, will be found a valuable addition.
Some persons clean their teeth every morning with soap; if soap be
used it ought to be Castile soap, and if the teeth be not white and
clear, Castile soap is an excellent cleanser of the teeth, and may be
used in lieu of the tooth-powder as before recommended.
There are few persons who brush the teeth properly. I will tell you
the right way. First of all procure a tooth-brush of the best make, and
of rather hard bristles, to enable it to penetrate into all the nooks and
corners of the teeth; then, having put a small quantity of warm water
into your mouth, letting the principal of it escape into the basin, dip
your brush in warm water, and if you are about using Castile soap,
rub the brush on a cake of the soap, and then well brush your teeth,
first upward and then downward, then from side to side—from right
to left and from left to right—then the backs of the teeth, then apply
the brush to the tops of the crowns of the teeth both of the upper and
of the lower jaw,—so that every part of each tooth, including the
gums, may in turn be well cleansed, and be well brushed. Be not
afraid of using the brush: a good brushing and dressing will do the
teeth and the gums an immensity of good; it will make the breath
sweet, and will preserve the teeth sound and good. After using the
brush the mouth must, of course, be well rinsed out with warm
water.
The finest set of teeth I ever saw in my life belonged to a middle-
aged gentleman; the teeth had neither spot nor blemish—they were
like beautiful pearls. He never had toothache in his life, and did not
know what toothache meant! He brushed his teeth, every morning,
with soap and water, in the manner I have previously recommended.
I can only say to you—go and do likewise!
Camphor ought never to be used as an ingredient of tooth-powder,
it makes the teeth brittle. Camphor certainly has the effect of making
the teeth, for a time, look very white; but it is an evanescent beauty.
Tartar is apt to accumulate between and around the teeth; it is
better in such a case not to remove it by scaling instruments, but to
adopt the plan recommended by Dr. Richardson, namely, to well
brush the teeth with pure vinegar and water.

PREVENTION OF DISEASE, Etc.

351. If a boy or a girl show great precocity of intellect, is any

organ likely to become affected?
A greater quantity of arterial blood is sent to the brain of those
who are prematurely talented, and hence it becomes more than
ordinarily developed. Such advantages are not unmixed with danger;
this same arterial blood may excite and feed inflammation, and
either convulsions, or water on the brain, or insanity, or, at last,
idiocy may follow. How proud a mother is in having a precocious
child! How little is she aware that precocity is frequently an
indication of disease!
352. How can danger in such a case be warded off?
It behooves a parent, if her son be precocious, to restrain him—to
send him to a quiet country place, free from the excitement of the
town; and when he is sent to school, to give directions to the master
that he is not on any account to tax his intellect (for a master is apt, if
he have a clever boy, to urge him forward); and to keep him from
those institutions where a spirit of rivalry is maintained, and where
the brain is thus kept in a state of constant excitement. Medals and
prizes are well enough for those who have moderate abilities, but
dangerous, indeed, to those who have brilliant ones.
An overworked precocious brain is apt to cause the death of the
owner; and if it does not do so, it in too many instances injures the
brain irreparably, and the possessor of such an organ, from being
one of the most intellectual of children, becomes one of the most
commonplace of men.
Let me urge you, if you have a precocious child, to give, and that
before it be too late, the subject in question your best consideration.
353. Are precocious boys in their general health usually strong or
delicate?
Delicate. Nature seems to have given a delicate body to
compensate for the advantages of a talented mind. A precocious
youth is predisposed to consumption, more so than to any other
disease. The hard study which he frequently undergoes excites the
disease into action. It is not desirable, therefore, to have a precocious
child. A writer in “Fraser’s Magazine” speaks very much to the
purpose when he says, “Give us intellectual beef rather than
intellectual veal.”
354. What habit of body is most predisposed to Scrofula?
He or she who has a moist, cold, fair, delicate, and almost
transparent skin, large prominent blue eyes, protuberant forehead,
light-brown or auburn hair, rosy cheeks, pouting lips, milk-white
teeth, long neck, high shoulders, small, flat, and contracted chest,
tumid bowels, large joints, thin limbs, and flabby muscles, is the
person most predisposed to scrofula. The disease is not entirely
confined to the above; sometimes he or she who has black hair, dark
eyes and complexion, is subject to it, but yet far less frequently than
the former. It is a remarkable fact that the most talented are the most
prone to scrofula, and being thus clever their intellects are too often
cultivated at the expense of their health. In infancy and childhood,
either water on the brain or mesenteric disease; in youth, pulmonary
consumption is frequently their doom. They, are like shining
meteors; their life is brilliant, but short.
355. How may Scrofula be warded off?
Strict attention to the rules of health is the means to prevent
scrofula. Books, unless as an amusement, ought to be discarded. The
patient must almost live in the open air, and his residence should be
a healthy country place, where the air is dry and bracing; if it be at a
farm-house, in a salubrious neighborhood, so much the better. In
selecting a house for a patient predisposed to scrofula, good pure
water should be an important requisite—indeed for every one who
values his health. Early rising in such a case is most beneficial. Wine,
spirits, and all fermented liquors ought to be avoided. Beef-steaks
and mutton-chops in abundance, and plenty of milk and farinaceous
food—such as rice, sago, arrow-root, etc.—should be his diet.
Scrofula, if the above rules be strictly and perseveringly followed,
may be warded off; but there must be no half measures, no trying to
serve two masters—to cultivate at the same time the health and the
intellect. The brain, until the body becomes strong, must not be
taxed. “You may prevent scrofula by care; but that some children are
originally predisposed to the disease there cannot be the least doubt,
and in such cases the education and the habits of youth should be so
directed as to ward off a complaint the effects of which are so
frequently fatal.”[295]
356. But suppose the disease to be already formed, what must
then be done?
The plan recommended above must still be pursued, not by fits
and starts, but steadily and continuously, for it is a complaint that
requires a vast deal of patience and great perseverance. Warm and
cold sea-bathing in such a case is generally most beneficial. In a
patient with confirmed scrofula it will of course be necessary to
consult a skillful and experienced doctor.
But do not allow, without a second opinion, any plan to be adopted
that will weaken the system, which is already too much depressed.
No, rather build up the body by good nourishing diet (as previously
recommended), by cod-liver oil, by a dry, bracing atmosphere, such
as either Brighton, or Ramsgate, Llandudno; or, if the lungs be
delicate, by a more sheltered coast, such as either St. Leonard’s or
Torquay.
Let no active purging, no mercurials, no violent, desperate
remedies be allowed. If the patient cannot be cured without them, I
am positive that he will not be cured with them.
But do not despair; many scrofulous patients are cured by time
and by judicious treatment. But if desperate remedies are to be used,
the poor patient had better by far be left to Nature. “Let me fall now
into the hand of the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me
not fall into the hand of man.”[296]
357. Have you any remarks to make on a girl stooping?
 A girl ought never to be allowed to stoop: stooping spoils the
figure, weakens the chest, and interferes with the digestion. If she
cannot help stooping, you may depend upon it that she is in bad
health, and that a medical man ought to be consulted. As soon as her
health is improved the dancing-master should be put in requisition,
and calisthenic and gymnastic exercises should be resorted to. Horse
exercise and swimming in such a case are very beneficial. The girl
should live well, on good nourishing diet, and not be too closely
confined either to the house or to her lessons. She ought during the
night to lie on a horse-hair mattress, and during the day, for two or
three hours, flat on her back on a reclining board. Stooping, if
neglected, is very likely to lead to consumption.
358. If a boy be round-shouldered and slouching in his gait, what
ought to be done?
Let him be drilled; there is nothing more likely to benefit him than
drilling. You never see a soldier round-shouldered nor slouching in
his gait. He walks every inch like a man. Look at the difference in
appearance between a country laborer and a soldier! It is the drilling
that makes the difference. “Oh, for a drill-sergeant to teach them to
stand upright, and to turn out their toes, and to get rid of that
slouching, hulking gait, which gives such a look of clumsiness and
stupidity!”[297]
359. My daughter has grown out of shape, she has grown on one
side, her spine is not straight, and her ribs bulge out more on the
one side than on the other: what is the cause, and can anything be
done to remedy the deformity?
The causes of this lateral curvature of the spine, and consequent
bulging out of the ribs that you have just now described, arise either
from delicacy of constitution, from the want of proper exercise, from
too much learning, or from too little play, or from not sufficient or
proper nourishment for a rapidly-growing body. I am happy to say
that such a case, by judicious treatment, can generally be cured—
namely, by gymnastic exercises, such as the hand-swing, the fly-pole,
the patent parlor gymnasium, the chest expander, the skipping-rope,
the swimming bath; all sorts of out-door games, such as croquet,
archery, etc.; by plenty of good nourishment, by making her a child
of Nature, by letting her almost live in the open air, and by throwing
books to the winds. But let me strongly urge you not, unless ordered
by an experienced surgeon, to allow any mechanical restraints or
appliances to be used. If she be made strong, the muscles themselves
will pull both the spine and the ribs into their proper places, more
especially if judicious games and exercises (as I have before advised),
and other treatment of a strengthening and bracing nature, which a
medical man will indicate to you, be enjoined. Mechanical appliances
will, if not judiciously applied, and in a proper case, waste away the
muscles, and will thus increase the mischief; if they cause the ribs to
be pushed in in one place, they will bulge them out in another, until,
instead of being one, there will be a series of deformities. No, the
giving of strength and the judicious exercising of the muscles are, for
a lateral curvature of the spine and the consequent bulging out of one
side of the ribs, the proper remedies, and, in the majority of cases,
are most effectual, and quite sufficient for the purpose.
I think it well to strongly impress upon a mother’s mind the great
importance of early treatment. If the above advice be followed, every
curvature in the beginning might be cured. Cases of several years’
standing might, with judicious treatment, be wonderfully relieved.
Bear in mind, then, that if the girl is to be made straight, she is
first of all to be made strong; the latter, together with the proper
exercises of the muscles, will lead to the former; and the earlier a
medical man takes it in hand, the more rapid, the more certain, and
the more effectual will be the cure.
An inveterate, long-continued and neglected case of curvature of
the spine and bulging out of the ribs on one side might require
mechanical appliances, but such a case can only be decided on by an
experienced surgeon, who ought always, in the first place, to be
consulted.
360. Is a slight spitting of blood to be looked upon as a dangerous
symptom?
Spitting of blood is always to be looked upon with suspicion, even
when a youth appears in other respects to be in good health; it is
frequently the forerunner of consumption. It might be said that, by
mentioning the fact, I am unnecessarily alarming a parent, but it
would be a false kindness if I did not do so:
“I must be cruel only to be kind.”[298]
Let me ask when is consumption to be cured? Is it at the onset, or is
it when it is confirmed? If a mother had been more generally aware
that spitting of blood was frequently the forerunner of consumption,
she would, in the management of her offspring, have taken greater
precautions; she would have made everything give way to the
preservation of their health; and, in many instances, she would have
been amply repaid by having the lives of her children spared to her.
We frequently hear of patients in confirmed consumption being sent
to Mentone, to Madeira, and to other foreign parts. Can anything be
more cruel or absurd? If there be any disease that requires the
comforts of home—and truly may an Englishman’s dwelling be called
home!—and good nursing more than another, it is consumption.
361. What is the death-rate of Consumption in England? At what
age does Consumption most frequently occur? Are girls more liable
to it than boys? What are the symptoms of this disease?
It is asserted, on good authority,[299] that there always are, in
England, 78,000 cases of consumption, and that the yearly death-
rate of this fell disease alone is 39,000! Consumption more
frequently shows itself between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one;
after then, the liability to the disease gradually diminishes, until at
the age of forty-five it becomes comparatively rare. Boys are more
prone to this complaint than girls. Some of the most important
symptoms of pulmonary consumption are indicated by the
stethoscope; but, as I am addressing a mother, it would, of course, be
quite out of place to treat of such signs in Conversations of this kind.
The symptoms it might be well for a parent to recognize, in order
that she may seek aid early, I will presently describe. It is perfectly
hopeless to expect to cure consumption unless advice be sought at
the onset, as the only effectual good in this disease is to be done at
first.
It might be well to state that consumption creeps on insidiously.
One of the earliest symptoms of this dreadful scourge is a slight, dry,
short cough, attended with tickling and irritation at the top of the
throat. This cough generally occurs in the morning; but, after some
time, comes on at night, and gradually throughout the day and the
night. Frequently during the early stage of the disease a slight
spitting of blood occurs. Now this is a most dangerous symptom;