[173] The inquiries
of Schuyten and Lobsien thus seem to indicate that the voluntary aptitudes
of muscular and mental force in children reach their maximum at a time of
the year when most of the more or less involuntary activities we have been
considering show a minimum of energy. If this conclusion should be
confirmed by more extended investigations, it would scarcely be matter for
surprise and would involve no true contradiction. It would, indeed, be
natural to suppose that the voluntary and regulated activities of the
nervous system should work most efficiently at those periods when they are
least exposed to organic and emotional disturbance.
So persistent a disturbing element in spring and autumn suggests that some
physiological conditions underlie it, and that there is a real metabolic
disturbance at these times of the year. So few continuous observations
have yet been made on the metabolic processes of the body that it is not
easy to verify such a surmise with absolute precision. Edward Smith's
investigations, so far as they go, support it, and Perry-Coste's
long-continued observations of pulse-frequency seem to show with fair
regularity a maximum in early spring and another maximum in late
autumn.[174] I may also note that Haig, who has devoted many years of
observations to the phenomena of uric-acid excretion, finds that uric acid
tends to be highest in the spring months, (March, April, May) and lowest
at the first onset of cold in October.
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