"Stress of academic work nothing new" selections from the University Archives

by Mark Wolfe - November 19, 2008

While writing those end of semester papers and preparing for finals current students might find some truth in Carrie J. Goddard's 1894 notes on Professor James Wetmore's class in Sanitary Science at the New York State Normal College (reproduced below). The title of the lecture, or at least of Goddard's notes on the lecture, was "Dangers of School Life to the Brain." According to Goddard's notes below, Wetmore told the class that "impure air, over study, examinations, punishments" could lead to diseases of the brain such as "St. Vitas' Dance, epilepsy, brain fever, [or] nervous prostration," or simply to "insanity."

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Pictured below is Professor Wetmore with his Natural Science Class in our Willett Street Building, ca. 1890. No picture of Goddard exists.

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For the original 1894 notebook and photos of our school, at the time the State Normal College, in the 1890 consult the University Archivist Geoffrey Williams in the , M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives Science Library 356.