Health and Medical Inspection of School Children
REVIEWS AND (TRTTTOTSM.
- Author:
Walter S. Covnell, M.D. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1912. Pp.
xiv+014.
Dr Cornell has boon for six years a medical inspector and is now Director of Medical Inspection in the Philadelphia Public Schools. In the course of this experience he has worked out many problems to a solution, and has become an authority upon methods. His book is, in the first place, a practical manual for the medical inspector, and in the second place a work of reference for the teacher who wishes to take an intelligent part in the movement for popular hygiene. Extensive as the volume is, “only general information is given on the treatment of diseases and defects,” Dr Cornell explains, for he “does not care to participate in home medication based on incorrect diagnosis.”
The first one hundred and fifty pages of the volume discuss medical inspection, its object, administration, correction of defects, results, and its present status in the United States. In this section the various blank forms, many of which have been devised by Dr Cornell, are particularly valuable. They include records, notices to parents and nurses, and reports of all kinds.
Speaking of the position of the medical inspector. Dr Cornell says, “Harmonious relations between the medical inspectors and the other physicians of the community are essential. It is impossible, as long as medical inspectors engage in private practice, for them to avoid the reputation of building up a clientele through the lever of their school work… The solution appears to lie (a) in the use of teachers, nurses, and social visitors for personal interviews with parents… (b) The medical inspector should keep his personality as much as possible in the background by signing parents’ notices without his address, and by living outside of his district when this is not an obvious inconvenience, (c) A better care by practising physicians of the children whom they regard as their patients.”
In discussing the co-operation of teacher, child and parent, Dr. Cornell remarks, “The teacher can, first of all, exercise the art of preventive medicine. She can keep her room well ventilated, abolish the common slate-pencil box and the common drinking cup, see that her children have proper-sized desks, give the children nerve-resting periods of relaxation, and changes of work, and treat them so gently that nerve storms are unknown… I have gone into so many class rooms in the elementary schools whose foul, warm atmosphere almost made me sick, that it is proper to call attention to this neglect of the understanding and practice of ventilation by school teachers.” A little further on he adds, “Let me not be misunderstood. The fault lies not with our teachers, (but with their training. They cannot even interpret the medical inspector’s record on the child’s health card. When our normal schools wake up, and spend a few dollars for actual specimens instead of depending’ entirely upon paper descriptions1; when teachers are taught to look into a child’s mouth instead of learning about intestinal villi and convoluted renal tubules, the teacher will know something about the subject and act with interest and confidence.” The sections on hygiene and school sanitation are highly interesting, and contain many ideas which a teacher may apply directly to enliven the routine of class work and increase the vigor of her pupils. Dr Cornell discusses the lighting of school rooms, ventilation and open air classes, physical training, recreation, sources of contagion, and methods of cleaning, concluding with a brief but stirring chapter on personal hygiene.
The remaining two-thirds of the book is concerned with the defects and diseases prevalent among children, taking up in turn the eyes, nose and throat, ear, teeth, nervous system, mental deficiency, the skeleton, nutrition, the skin, speech, and infectious diseases. The chapters on the eyes, nose and throat, and ear, are among the best in the book, and should be studied carefully by every teacher of young children; while the chapter on mental deficiency presents the varieties of mental defect so clearly that any medical inspector1 who is not already a neurologist can use it as a guide in rough classification.
Parts of this section on mental deficiency have appeared as articles in The Psychological Clinic, as have parts of certain other chapters, notably those on nervous disorders of school children, penny lunches, and school nursing. A. T.
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