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(b) Cases requiring operation for the removal of adenoids and
enlarged tonsils are referred by the School Medical Officer to
the Hornsey Central Hospital. Every child operated on is kept
in Hospital overnight or until the surgeon is of opinion it is safe
for the patient to return to its home, where it is visited by a
school nurse.
(c) Cases with signs or symptoms suggestive of tuberculosis are
sent to the Tuberculosis Officer of the County Council
(Dr. Dobson).
(d) Skin disease, and
(e) External eye disease are included under the minor ailments
treated daily by the school nurses under the supervision of the
School Medical Staff.
(f) Defects of vision are treated by the School Oculist (Dr. J. S.
Boden), who devotes two sessions per week to this work.
(g) Ear disease (otorrhœa) and defective hearing are treated by
the Aural Specialist (Dr. A. R. Friel), who reports on his
department of the work as follows:—
"The outstanding event of the Aural Clinic in the
present year has been the opportunity of examining the cases
of deafness in school children which have been detected by
Dr. Crowden, of the London School of Tropical Medicine and
Hygiene, in a systematic testing he undertook of all the children
in the Elementary Schools. This has been rendered possible
by the use of an apparatus called an audiometer. It is a
gramophone with a large number of headphones attached to
it. Each headphone has only one earpiece, which is placed
over the ear to be examined. Twenty-four children can be
tested at once. The gramophone speaks 12 series of numbers;
each series has three numbers, and each number three units.
Thus the first series might be 836, 512, 791. The numbers
are spoken with an intensity the same as a man speaking a few
feet from the listener. The second series is spoken as if the
man were at a greater distance, and so on to the last series. A
child with sharp hearing and ordinary intelligence can write
down correctly all the numbers of the 12 series. The numbers
he cannot hear he cannot write down, and this failure gives a
measure of his deafness. The percentage of children who were