Excerpts from 19th-century students’ physiology exams:

• “Physillogigy is to study about your bones stummick and vertebry.”
• “Occupations which are injurious to health are cabolic acid gas which is impure blood.”
• “We have an upper and lower skin. The lower skin moves all the time and the upper skin moves when we do.”
• “The body is mostly composed of water and about one half is avaricious tissue.”
• “The stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body.”
• “The gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking.”
• “The Chyle flows up the middle of the backbone and reaches the heart where it meets the oxygen and is purified.”
• “The salivary glands are used to salivate the body.”
• “In the stomach starch is changed to cane sugar and cane sugar to sugar cane.”
• “The olfactory nerve enters the cavity of the orbit and is developed into the special sense of hearing.”
• “The growth of a tooth begins in the back of the mouth and extends to the stomach.”
• “If we were on a railroad track and a train was coming the train would deafen our ears so that we couldn’t see to get off the track.”

— From Mark Twain, “English as She Is Taught: Being Genuine Answers to Examination Questions in Our Public Schools,” 1887