Excerpt from Hawaii's Need of Medical Inspection of Schools In a small minority of cases were such defects known to parents, teachers, or the children themselves. A local application may not be out of place. Somewhat over a year ago word reached me that a child in one of our city schools had been severely whipped and 1 was asked to look into the case. The teacher admitted whipping the child for inattentiveness and failure to obey orders. A careful inquiry developed the fact that the child was almost totally deaf in the. right ear and that when spoken to from that side she either did not hear at all or so indistinctly as not to comprehend what was said. The condition was unknown to parent, teacher and child. Hawaii has over 18,000 public school children. An examination here would doubtless produce startling results. For the year ending April 30, 1908, the government dispensary gave 4,605 treatments for trachoma to children from only twelve of our public schools in this city. How many private treatments were given, and how many in other places needed treatment, I do not know. Massachusetts has developed a system for testing sight and hearing, which may be applied by the teachers themselves, and the result of one year's work proved its value. Three hundred and forty-nine towns reported 432,937 children examined, with 96,609 or 22 Jo defective in sight and 27,387, or 6% defective in hearing. Physicians state that teachers properly instructed can discover from 75 to 85 per cent, of cases needing attention. The simplicity and effectiveness of the Massachusetts system commend it for adoption here. Exhibit No. 1 shows this system in detail. The cuts of the boy on Card No. 2 are a fair sample of results which may be reasonably expected where treatment is given. The above tests arc ones involving a minimum of time and expense with promise of an unlimited amount of resultant good. Such tests, with arrangements made for furnishing glasses or medical attention at moderate cost to those who could pay, and assistance to those who could not, would remove one great obstacle to the proper development of the child. The primary object of medical inspection in schools was the detection of infectious and contagious diseases and the exclusion of pupils likely to spread same. An elaborate plan of inspection was adopted in New York City. Children having diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, chicken pox, whooping cough, mumps, acute catarrhal infection of the nose or throat, pediculosis, contagious eye or skin diseases, were sent home. In the first month, 10,567 children were excluded from school attendance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.