5 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE PRACTICAL NECESSITY OF SCHOOL CLINICS 



I!v E. H. LEWINSKI-CORWIX, Th.D. 



EFFICIENCY was defined by one of our great American engineers 

 as " the relation between what is and what ought to be." Judging 

 by this standard and agreeing on the premise that one hundred per cent, 

 efficiency in medical school inspi ction means a complete discovery of all 

 of the ailments and defects of the children followed by a prompt, rigor- 

 ous and effective alleviation and cure of them, so far as they can be 

 alleviated or cured, we must admit, in the light of established facts, that 

 we have not only failed to reach the uppermost notch of efficiency, but 

 that we are quite a good distance away from it. I shall not attempt to 

 reproduce here the tables of statistics showing the number of defects 

 noted in the schools of this and other countries and the corresponding 

 statistics of treatments and results of treatments. They are in a general 

 way known to all of us. In New York City in 1911, for instance, 166,- 

 368 children were found to be needing treatment, of whom 65,150 — or 

 not fully 40 per cent. — were reported as treated. We don't know how 

 many of the defects noted were actually remedied, as there is, of course, 

 a difference between reported treatment and actual cure. A single visit 

 to a dispensary is considered as treatment, and there is no law whereby 

 the Health Department of the city can enforce further action, even if in 

 its opinion the treatment is inadequate. Nor is such a law desirable. 

 We are evidently not accomplishing fully what we have set out to do. 

 There is a serious gap between our aim and its fulfilment. 



Efficiency depends almost wholly on the application of certain broad 

 general principles. When our work proves to be falling short of effi- 

 ciency we must either change our methods of procedure or revise the 

 underlying principles governing them, or both. One of the principles of 

 medical inspection of school children is to point out defects, leaving it 

 to those most interested in the welfare of the children to have them at- 

 tended to and treated — a perfectly reasonable expectation which, how- 

 ever, like many other social theories and assumptions, is, unfortunately, 

 net being borne out by actual facts. 



Many parents are ignorant, many negligent and indifferent, many 

 are overworked and indigent. Campaigns of education and social reform 

 will undoubtedly decrease the numbers of the ignorant and the indigent, 

 but this is a slow process. If our faith in school medical inspection is 

 justifiable and if we really mean to decrease the appallingly large amount 

 of illness and physical discomforts among school children and conserve 

 their health, thus promoting well-being and sound education, we must 



