The record-union., 1897-12-07
SCHOOL DISINFECTION.

At Oregon City the other day the
School Board ordered, on the advice of
a physician who is a member of the
board, that every day all the pencils
and pen holders used by the school
children in each school building shall
be gathered together and fumigated,
because the board had been convinced
by its medical member that contagious
and infectious diseases are carried and
transmitted in germ form by those
simple vehicles.
This may appear to be carrying the
disinfection idea to the extreme and
making a fad of it. But what are we
to say 10 those skilled men, whose duty
it is TO know and who tell us that dis
ease is transmitted to our children
through such mediums? Is it sufficient
answer to say that in the years agone
our fathers and grandfathers and their
progenitors went to the country school
and chewed quill ends, and sucked pen
Gil tops, and handled in all sorts of
ways all manner of old fashioned pen
and pencil holders, and none of them
came to harm by reason of such un-
cleanly practices?
How do we know that they did not
suffer for these things? How are we to
know that many of them did not take
severe punishment for ignorance Of san
itary laws? Indeed, do we not know
that our fathers and mothers before us
suffered very bitterly where we are
spared, simply because we know that
diphtheria must be fought as we con-
test with small pox; that it must be
quarantined, the patient sequestered,
the funerals of it's victims be unat-
tended save by necessary burial off,
GERS
We know what are the benefits of
correct drainage, that wells must not
be sunk below house drains, privies and
stables; that decaying vegetable matter
induces zymotic diseases; that typhoid
fever comes to us through water drink
ing, not through the air We breathe,
and 60 on through long list of things
experience and science have taught US
of which our great grandparents were
ignorant, and for want of which knowl-
edge they must have suffered
Are we prepared to say, therefore,
that the Oregon City School Board has
gone to the extreme IN ordering school
pencils and penholders to be fumigated
to their complete disinfection daily
We can easily understand how these
simple utensils can become the means
of carriage for germs of disease, COM
mon carriers indeed. since they pass
about freely, from hand to hand, not
TO say mouth to mouth, In the schools.
The "Oregonian" calls attention TO the
fact that a dreadful cutaneous disease
that was widely spread a few years ago
among school children was traced di-
rect1y to the clay used in modelling in
the schools. It was handled by all the
art pupils, worked by them over and
over again, and thus became the We
hicle for transmission of disease germs
developed upon a single hand.
OF course there is no reason why
children in schools should not be re-
quired to care for their own pencils and
penholders, yet 1t is simply impossible
for any teacher in a graded school to
wholly prevent the passage OF these
articles from hand to hand. Where the
department furnishes the articles. as
most departments do, it is not excessive
exaction to require 1t to keep the goods
cleanly Oregon City is not alone in
her precautionary methods. In Indiana
it has long been the rule to disinfect
not only the articles used by school
children In school, but to regularly fu-
migate the schoolrooms, and to devote
especial attention to the cleanliness of
all the school furniture.
In that state every school house has
a disinfecting or sterilizing oven, very
simple in construction and costing but
a trlAe 1t is brought 10 the proper
degree of heat, dry or moist, as may
be required, the small articles are
placed in the oven, and after the lapse
of the proper time they are taken out
and that is all there Is to it. This
sterilizing process informs the children