... "The first thing that society wants of our girl is good health. This is the first essential for her efficient service and personal happiness in shop, office, store, school or home. The future of the race so far as she represents it, depends upon her health. What is the high school doing to improve the girl's health? In the overwhelming majority of cases absolutely nothing. On the other hand, it is subjecting her to a regimen planned for boys, without the slightest consideration of the physical and functional differences between the sexes.
"It pays no attention to the curvature of the spine developed by the exclusively sit-at-a-desk-and-study-a-book type of education bequeathed to the girlhood of the nation by the medieval monastery: It ignores the chorea, otherwise known as St. Vitus' dance developed by overstudy and underexercise; it disregards the malnutrition of hasty breakfasts, and lunches of pickles, fudge, cream-puffs and other kickshaws, not to mention the catch penny trash too often provided by the janitor or concessionaire of the school luncheon, who isn't doing business for his health or for anybody else's; it neglects eye-strain, unhygienic dress, uncleanly habits, anemia, periodic headaches, nervousness, adenoids, and wrong habits of posture and movements.... If you believe that the high school is a social institution with a mission of public service, regardless of the relation of that service to Latin or Algebra, then you must agree that it should look after what everyone recognizes as the foremost need of the adolescent girl.
"One fact that every educator in both camps knows is that the home is not attending to the health of the adolescent girl. This problem is pressing upon us now largely because of the revolutions in living conditions that has come within the last quarter of a century."
In a report of a recent Conference on the
Conservation of School Children held at Lehigh University by the American Academy of Medicine, the following items appear.
Four great reasons why medical inspection in schools is needed were brought out by Dr. Thomas A. Story of New York, who spoke from the educator's standpoint:
"The first reason is concerned with communicable diseases, and the second with remediable incapacitating physical defects. It was reported in 1906 that over twenty per cent. of the children in the schools of New York City had defective vision, and over fifty per cent. had defective teeth. These defective conditions are amenable to treatment whereby the functional efficiency of the pupil is improved. He is capable of better work and the school efficiency is advanced.
"The third reason is concerned with irremediable physical defects. The cripples, the deformed and the delinquents whose incapacitating defects are permanent should be found and classified. This enables special instruction and opens up educational possibilities otherwise unattainable, besides removing retarding factors in the progress of the normal pupil.
"The fourth reason is concerned with the development of hygienic habits in the school child, and through the child, of the community. Medical inspection which influences the health habits of the masses is a matter of supreme importance. The teacher will have pupils of cleaner habits and healthier, with fewer interruptions and disturbances from absences.
"To make medical inspection successful physical examinations should uncover the anatomic, physiologic, and hygienic conditions. Every piece of advice given to a pupil that can be followed up should be followed up and the result recorded. No system of medical inspection in schools can be complete and permanently successful which does not eventually educate the parent and child to a sympathetic and coöperative relationship with the system. Medical inspection is a force working for a better general education in personal hygiene and should coördinate with the class room instruction. Hence it