THE VALUE OF THE PRACTICE AND TEACHING OF 

 HYGIENE IN SCHOOLS. 



By P. Targett Adams, M.R.C.S., D.P.H. 



The subject matter of my discourse is to many, perhaps, a very 

 famihar one. My excuse for asking for its consideration— a very 

 commonplace one — will, I am sure, be put on one side when the 

 plea is raised of the supreme importance and urgency of this 

 problem to both the present and future generations of children 

 and, through them, ultimately to the State. 



With the advancing conditions of the times comes the ever- 

 increasing complexity of social life, its increasing strain upon the 

 individual, its overwhelming artificiality imposing so many con- 

 ditions upon those who will live, if they can but survive the intensity 

 of the struggle for existence, based as such survival must be upon 

 simple fitness of health, intellect and wholesome environment. 



I need not labour an insistence upon the value and importance 

 of these facts, but proceed to indicate how the principles under- 

 lying the art of living may be best taught by the teacher. The 

 general necessity for a more careful and systematic consideration 

 and practice of Hygiene as applied to school life relative to the 

 physical and mental improvement of the English race was brought 

 most prominently before that public as the result of a Government 

 Commission of Enquiry into the alleged physical deterioration 

 (or the contrary) of the English people living in Great Britain. 

 Attention had some years previously been given to this matter by 

 certain of the more thoughtful sanitarians in that country and 

 other European countries too, but the Royal Commission referred 

 to focussed observation upon the necessity for an immediate 

 attention to its national importance, and from that date the so- 

 called " school " hygiene has taken a foremost position in English 

 School Educational practice. It came tardily, no doubt, but once 

 its advantage was recognised it has never tarried in its progress. 



Among the South African Colonies, our own, together with (in 

 part) the Transvaal have commenced to direct attention to its 

 importance, although, so far as I am aware, the remaining colonies 

 in this sub-continent have taken no public action in the direction 

 of the systematic teaching of hygiene in schools, nor have they 

 instituted the practice of a medical inspection of their school 

 children. In the Orange River Colony we have attempted this 

 task (and with some success) by instituting a course of systematic 

 instructions of school teachers in the principles of the laws of 

 health, together with their special application to schools and 

 scholars, such knov/ledge being a compulsory qualification of all 

 future school teachers. This the Minister and Director of Educa- 

 tion organised, and insisted upon with conspicuous advantage to 

 the present and future of school administration. 



