European physicians long worried that the scholarly life was harmful to health. Neurological and digestive problems flowed from sedentary, seated lives. In the late eighteenth century, when the Enlightenment began spreading education to more people, educators inspired by Rousseau's Emile such as Johann Guts Muths, Friedrich Jahn, Johann Pestalozzi, and Philipp von Fellenberg explored ways to add exercise to schooling. In the northeastern United States, educational reformers were also concerned with how to expand schooling without subjecting more children and teachers to the diseases of scholars. Particularly in New England, educators such as Catharine Beecher, Mary Lyon, Alden Partridge, and Joseph Green Cogswell tested new forms of exercise in academies for both girls and boys. Educational reformers had in common a tendency toward ill health, so the dilemma of scholarly frailty particularly engaged them. Spinal curvature and pulmonary consumption added to the previous concerns for students and teachers. In addition to exercise, improving schoolhouse ventilation, heating, and desks could keep students healthier, and teaching physiology could train them to keep themselves healthier. Boston's highly developed and prevention-oriented medical culture and its medical and education publications made the city the ideal home for the first seven annual meetings of the American Institute of Instruction, which were rich with health content. This paper focuses on the keen interest in health among American educators of the common school reform era before Horace Mann, which puts his interest in phrenology in perspective as only one of many paths to health concerns.
