HISTORY AND PRESENT STATUS 



TABLE 5. CITIES OF UNITED STATES HAVING SYSTEMS OF MEDICAL 



INSPECTION, AND CITIES EMPLOYING SCHOOL DENTISTS, BY 



GROUPS OF STATES. 191 I 



FOUR PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF MEDICAL INSPECTION 

 Systems of medical inspection in different parts of the United 

 States vary from simple and rudimentary ones to the more com- 

 plex organizations designed to safeguard every phase of the child's 

 physical life in the school. There are four principal features which 

 constitute component parts of these different systems, and they 

 are found in almost every possible combination. These features 

 are: 



1. Medical inspection conducted by physicians for the detec- 

 tion and exclusion of cases of contagious diseases; 



2. Examinations conducted by teachers for the detection of 

 defects of vision and hearing; 



3. Examinations conducted by physicians for the detection of 

 defects of vision and hearing; 



4. Complete physical examinations conducted by physicians. 



The figures showing how these different features are com- 

 bined in the systems of medical inspection in this country reveal 

 the relatively chaotic condition and lack of uniformity existing 

 in this branch of educational work. These conditions are shown 

 in Table 6. 



The data that have been reviewed show that 443 school 

 systems out of the i ,046 which reported had regularly organized 

 systems of medical inspection in 1911. But these data fall far 

 short of doing justice to the situation in the United States. While 



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