View report page

115
Report of the County Medical Officer-Education.

The school session extends continuously throughout the winter, and the open-air principle is
still quite strictly adhered to, the windows being kept widely open, while good fires are maintained in
each bungalow. The danger of taking cold in winter is largely dependent upon stuffy rooms, but there
seems little risk from differences of temperature when fires are made under strictly open air conditions. In
fact, large fires should be encouraged as the natural relief to any physical hardship the fresh-air regime
might be supposed to entail in the coldest weather. During rest, the children cover themselves with
blankets. This provides also a protection from the sun on hot days. For wet weather each child has a
numbered mackintosh, generally stored at the school, and for use in going to and fro to meals, and
in other special circumstances. A stock of clogs sufficient to go round the whole school is also kept.
The children put them on for gardening, and also on arrival in winter with wet feet or defective boots,
when the clogs are worn all daw
During the year there was an average attendance of 100 children, drawn from the districts of
Greenwich, Westcombe Park, Charlton, Woolwich, Plumstead, Abbey Wood, and in one case from
New Cross. At the resumption of work in April, 1914, the places of 20 old pupils who had left the
school at the end of March were filled by 32 newcomers. The defects noted amongst newly arrived
children and others, at their admission or at any time during the year, were:—
Nutrition poor or bad 14
Early phthisis, suspicion of 20
Active phthisis (excluded from school) 2
Chest expansion poor 8
Adenitis of neck (? tubercular) 7
Defective teeth 8
Enlarged tonsils and adenoids 7
Otorrhœa 3
Anaemia 13
Tendency to chorea 1
Blepharitis 4
Asthma 1
Scoliosis (slight) 8
Kyphosis (slight) 3
Defective vision 8
Paralysis (facial) 1
Rickets 6
Rheumatism 1
Malformed toes 1
Deafness 1
Heart Disease (slight) 1
Total 118
Treatment of the throat and eyes and special medical affections were in all cases, with one exception,
promptly attended to by the parents. The Council's dentist visited the school and referred all
cases of defective teeth to the local centre for treatment.
Otorrhoea and blepharitis were given daily attention at the school by the nurse, who also superintended
graduated exercises for spinal and chest cases under the doctor's direction. At the end of
the year there were 49 children attending the Woolwich, and 5 the Greenwich tuberculosis dispensaries
for phthisical or tuberculous tendencies. The practice adopted is for the children to go down to the
dispensary, a class at a time, on certain fixed days. No cases of active phthisis were allowed to remain
in the school. During the year two were excluded indefinitely after careful re-examination.
With regard to the general defects, such as malnutrition and anæmia, from which most of the
children may be supposed to have been suffering in some degree on admission, and for which the open-air
school is specially provided, there can be no doubt of the great good received. And this, along with
27715 Q 2