278 EDUCATIONAL PREVENTION OF INFANT MORTALITY 



tural expert (a plan which, if I am not mistaken, had its incep- 

 tion at the Agricultural College of Cornell University). If this 

 project is successful, we shall be able to rate the condition of any 

 school building, down to the last detail, in quantitative terms, and 

 we shall hope to accomplish an improvement in schoolhouse con- 

 struction and sanitation comparable to the improvement in the 

 condition of dairies that has followed the work of the milk expert 

 and his score card. 



In giving this brief account of the use of instruments of preci- 

 sion in our course in school hygiene, I would not be under- 

 stood to imply that work with instruments of precision constitutes 

 any very considerable part of the regular instruction of under- 

 graduates, or that we intend in any sense to make experts in 

 school architecture and sanitation of the rank and file of our 

 teachers. On the contrary, the center of emphasis is, and must 

 always be, the physical and mental health of the child himself. 



DISCUSSION 



Prof. C.-E. A. Winslow, Associate Professor of Biology, College 

 of the City of New York and Curator of Public Health, American 

 Museum of Natural History: Dr. Putnam has asked me to open the 

 discussion of these papers, and then she has carefully pointed out that 

 no one has a right to be heard who has not had practical experience 

 in teaching teachers, which I have not. I think, however, from the 

 standpoint of a practical sanitarian that teachers should have a funda- 

 mental training in bacteriology and sanitary science besides the usual 

 courses in biology and physiology if they are going to take care of 

 the young human bodies entrusted to their care. They should have 

 first a course of some thirty hours in elementary bacteriology, the 

 structure and physiology and mode of spread of bacteria for their 

 own information, and because that subject is going to be introduced 

 in the future into the schools in connection with hygiene or nature 

 study. Second, there should be a course of approximately the same 

 length on sanitary science or the general relation of the individual 

 to his environment in regard to the spread of communicable disease. 

 Third, should come a practical course such as has been so admirably 

 described on the specific problems of hygiene and sanitation. This 

 course should include inspection of school buildings, a study of the 

 waste disposal system, the lighting, desks, etc., and particularly a dis- 

 cussion of the problems of ventilation. The use of the wet and dry 

 bulb thermometer and of some method of determining the carbon 

 dioxide in the air should be emphasized. In this connection I should 

 like to call your attention to a report made a year ago on standard 

 methods for the examination of air by the American Public Health 

 Association which sets forth some of these methods in detail. If Dr. 

 Putnam had given statistics of the schools where there was apparatus 

 to determine humidity it would not have been a long list. It is the 

 combination of saturation and temperature which has the worst physi- 

 ological effect, and yet we have almost no information about the con- 

 ditions which exist. 



