The low state of the students’ health attracted the attention of one observer in 1840. He noted that many, especially those who had worked on farms or in shops and stores, came to the Institution in good physical condition but that after a short time broke down because of too little exercise. In 1836 and 1841 there were epidemics of mumps and measles; in 1845 smallpox threatened. The Executive Committee permitted two local physicians to deliver at their own expense a course of physiological and anatomical lectures in 1833. The professors themselves discussed with the students from time to time matters of hygiene and physical education. They also sanctioned a Hygeian Society which in 1845 listened to a long lecture by Dr. J. S. Douglas, a local physician, on homeopathy as the best means of curing disease.
Student interest in the reform movements of the period was most aroused with respect to antislavery. As we have already seen, the faculty feared the adverse public opinion campus antislavery societies might create and therefore suppressed them. The world peace movement, however, did not disturb the local equilibrium. Students’ attention had been directed to it in 1837 by a prize offered by Howard Malcom, prominent Boston Baptist clergyman, for the best essay on the Christian attitude toward war. Three years later, by faculty invitation, Captain William Ladd, President of the American Peace Society, addressed the Institution. Students at the Institution joined those of Auburn, Princeton, and Andover Seminaries in 1833 in sending letters of commendation to John R. McDowall who formed the Christian Benevolent Society “to reform depraved and abandoned females.”
Like Unitarianism in 1830, the doctrine of perfectionism in 1840 briefly menaced Baptist orthodoxy on the campus. Developed at Oberlin College, this philosophy taught that through the help of Christ one might attain a state of “Christian perfection” before death. It was charged that Elder Jacob Knapp, the revivalist, had encouraged students to accept the doctrine. When Professor Maginnis faced this heresy in his theology class he sought first to combat it with spiritual argument. This means failing, he lectured on the results of such theories as shown in ecclesiastical history, whereupon his hearers gave up their erroneous views.
Since most students had already had preaching experience and were young men whose average age was twenty-five, their teachers felt they could be trusted with extensive responsibility and authority. The
