The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1912-03-01

dull the activity of the child's mind.
/ Ventilation of the school room is
of sufficient Importance to require
careful inspection. Boys and girls
must have fresh air to enjoy living
and to enable them to have the great
est vitality for their school work,
The normal amount of CO in the at
mospheric air is three parts in TO-
900. In densely populated parts of
cities the amount will be a little
higher. Authorities agree generally
that the air in the school room should
not exceed seven parts In 10000.
The amount usually in the air of
badly ventilated buildings is not SO
injurious to health as the ill-smelling,
poisonous emanations from persons
and the exhaling of bacteria from the
nose and mouth, but the proportion
of the carbon dioxide present is in
direct ratio to the other impurities,
ACuCC Iuc pldCIACC VI doCCA IdiAlA6 IAC
proportion of carbon dioxide.
According to sanitarians, school
rooms should be of such size as to
allow $50 cubic feet of air space for
each child, and the ventilation SO
arranged as to ensure 1900 cubic feet
of pure air each hour.
DR.. Kiefer, health officer of De-
troit, Mich, made series of invest
igations in the matter of ventilation
of school buildings, and found that
in those schools that were badly ven-
tilated and had high percentage of
carbon dioxide in the air, there was
CORRESPONDENCE greater number of
communicable diseases. .
The inspection should also see that
the children are provided with COM
Portable and sanitary toilet facilities.
The old-fashioned privy with its pit
and flies should become obsolete.
Medical inspection, in the early his
tory of the movement, was limited to
the investigation of contagious di
seases, and was more or less spas
modic, and generally when requested
| by boards of health as a means of
protecting the public from epidemics.
Of course, children, by reason of
close association in schools, are liza
BILE to contract contagious diseases,
and negligent parents sometimes un-
Intentionally have sent their children
to school when they have been suffer-
ing from these diseases, and thus
been the cause of spreading unneces-
sary disease among untold numbers
of other children, and too often fol-
lowed by permanent diseased condi-
tons and perhaps death. Efficient
medical inspection will reduce this
liability to contagious disease to
minimum, as will enable the au-
thorities to checks them before they
can spread into epidemics.
Cases that are discovered by lin
spection among the school children
will very often be the means of un-
covering concealed cases at the
homes. In fact, inspection in Chica-
go has produced this result. For ev-
cry case of contagious disease dis
covered in such schools, the authori-
ties have found an average of three
cases at the home that were not re-
ported.
The health reports of many cities
show that medical inspection of
schools is resulting in decrease in
the amount of contagion among chill
dren. In Chicago, diphtheria de-
creased 20 per cent the year follow
ing it's adoption, and there were g.
1926 cases less of scarlet fever, with
g decrease of 307 deaths from the
same disease as compared with the
year before inspection. DR.. Gulick |
states that in Boston, before medical
inspection was introduced, diphtheria
was more common during the school
term than during vacation, but after
inspection it became less common.
We are spending $500, 100000 in
the United States annually for public
school purposes, and Idaho last year
spent 7,506.10 for her public
school system. 1t has been carefully
estimated that 20 per cent of the
amount paid for the education chill
dren receive in the public schools is
spent to enable backward pupils to
repeat grades. Idaho is, therefore,
spending over 100000
yearly for this same condition. A
great number of these backward chill
dren are rendered so because of re-
movable defects.
We learn, from medical inspection
both in America and in Europe, that ,
30 per cent of the children in the
higher grades are suffering from va