COLLEGE WOMEN AND THE NEW SCIENCE. 685 



Acting upon these convictions, otlier college women have been 

 active in the attempt to introduce various branches of the new 

 science into the public schools of their cities, among which may be 

 mentioned Buffalo, Cambridge, and Detroit. 



In Boston, college women have applied sanitary science directly 

 to the public schools, as well as helping to secure it in the course of 

 instruction. During 1895 a committee of five, constituted by the 

 Boston branch of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, investigated 

 the sanitary conditions of the public schools and achieved most note- 

 worthy results. This committee consisted of Mrs. Alice Upton Pear- 

 main, then president of the Boston branch, and now president of the 

 general association; Mrs, Ellen H. Richards, Mrs. Alice P Norton, 

 Miss E. May Dame, and Miss Helena S. Dudley, then head worker 

 of the Boston College Settlement. 



One hundred and ninety-three schools of the different grades were 

 investigated. Among them some were found to be entirely unfit 

 for school purposes, a number being unworthy the expense of repairs, 

 others being hired rooms in old dwellings, and one school even being 

 in the basement of a grocery store. 



"While a grant had been asked and obtained from the Legislature 

 for two million dollars for new buildings, it was found that there 

 were already about seven thousand unoccupied seats in the schools. 



In one school the lighting was found to be so bad that eight cases 

 of inflammation of the eyes were sent to the hospital for treatment 

 in one month, while ventilation from within was unworthy of men- 

 tion, and impossible from without, because of the constant noise from 

 chopping in the wood yard close by, and because of odors from the 

 old-style vaults in the yard and from a near stable containing eighty 

 or ninety horses. 



Such conditions were by no means exceptional. Indeed, inade- 

 quate heating apparatus, lack of ventilation (eighty per cent of the 

 methods of ventilation not working well), bad odors, and insufficient 

 light were found to exist in the majority of buildings. 



Very indefinite rules were also found regulating janitors' duties, 

 with the result that in nearly half of the buildings rooms were dusted 

 only once a week with a feather duster, disinfectants were used in 

 only fifty-seven schools, and the floors in fifty-nine schools had never 

 been washed since built in a period of years ranging from fifty to five 

 years. 



This committee has had the satisfaction of securing reform in 

 nearly every instance which was a matter of domestic science, while 

 others requiring legislative enactment are pending. 



Such and many more similar instances of the unsanitary con- 

 ditions of the schools, brought to the attention of those in authority 



