EFFECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE 



263 



schools with forenoon sessions only. This is shown in the following 

 table. 



Both Hertel and Schmid-Monnard found that the percentage of 

 morbidity rises considerably toward the end of the school year. Mor- 

 tality, also, slightly increases for a brief period after school entrance, as 

 does also the incidence of infectious diseases. 



The most extensive and important single investigation of this kind 

 yet made is that carried out by the Eussian Department of Education, 

 the results of which were reported by Khlopine in 1911 (10). This 

 investigation was essentially a sanitary census of all the secondary 

 schools of the Eussian empire, carefully and uniformly carried out 

 under the direction of the chief medical officer of schools, and including 

 about 116,000 out of the 139,000 pupils enrolled. Its main purpose 

 was to establish the incidence for age, grade, sex and type of school of 

 the following defects : myopia, spinal curvature, nasal hemorrhages, 

 headaches and nervous troubles. 



Khlopine's data show that myopia is much more common in the 

 upper grades than in the lower, in the larger cities than in the smaller, 

 and in western than in eastern Eussia. Spinal curvature increases 

 about 50 per cent, between the first and the last school grade. Between 

 the first and the seventh grade headaches double in frequency while 

 nervous troubles increase nearly fivefold. Nasal hemorrhages, which 

 are thought by some to be associated with the circulatory changes in the 

 head which result from the act of reading, were twice as common in the 

 classical schools, with their heavier demands for reading, as in the 

 technical schools. 



We can not here enter into a critical discussion of the above investi- 

 gations. It is well to emphasize, however, that such studies have to 

 deal with exceedingly complex factors whose respective influences are 

 hard to separate. At the same time, the problems are very challenging 

 to the biologist and physiologist as well as to the school hygienist, and 

 are probably capable of being refined in such a way as to yield more 

 positive results than we have yet had on this aspect of human efficiency. 



Eeferences 

 1. Giuseppe Badaloni. Encore du travail a l'ecole en rapport a la fonction de 



la respiration. Inter. Mag. Sch. Eyg., 1910, VI., pp. 153-165 (c/. Vol- 



ume II., 1906). 



Lu ; 



