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16
be later. To see any object clearly within a yard of the eye needs a very much greater muscular
effort of accommodation than in an adult, and as these fine muscles are not mature and this effort
cannot be kept up by the child it sacrifices clearness to get a larger image by bringing the eye
close up to the work, thereby learning the worst of school habits. A habit that, with the present
Infant school curriculum, even the best teacher is powerless to prevent.
The child bends over its work, straining itself to do this, and contracting its chest. The evil
the school originates in this way can in great measure be prevented by requiring all work in the
Infant Department to be large and at a proper distance from the eyes.
The greatest evil to the child in the Infant Department falls, not on the eye, but on the brain,
which is overstrained in maintaining that accommodation and convergence of the eye which is
possible, and in the fatiguing movements of the fingers required for the fine work demanded
in school.
PERSONAL CLEANLINESS.
The majority of cases of injury to health among children may be traced originally to a want of
cleanliness.
For some years nurses had been provided by voluntary means to visit a few schools, and about
three years ago the late Authority appointed a nurse to visit schools in the Southwark, Tower
Hamlets, and Hackney Divisions. After a year's experience (8.1.03) they appointed three nurses,
and immediately after the summer vacation of 1904 the Council raised the number to 12. This
number is quite insufficient for the work wanted.
The nurses provided by the voluntary associations attended a few schools frequently; they
examined children with cuts, sores, abscesses and bruises, and applied dressings, or other treatment.
The work done appealed at first glance as a work of kindness and charity, but it was neither
educational nor really of serious use, yet for sentimental reasons it was much appreciated by teachers,
managers, and others.
The nurses working under the late School Board, and continued by the Council, give no treatment,
but are accomplishing a highly important work of considerable educational value. They were
appointed first to examine cases of ringworm, and were, in fact, termed ringworm nurses; then their
duties were extended to all forms of obvious uncleanness and disease. They also follow up their
school work in many cases by home visits, and there is a noticeable tendency, both among the
teachers and school attendance superintendents, to utilise the nurses' visits as a means of securing
better school attendance.
The method of working which the nurses adopt is to pay single visits here and there to different
schools in their district, but every third week begin a very thorough examination of one school,
and pay several visits at short intervals till it is deemed sufficiently cleansed. The teachers should
then endeavour to maintain the results of the nurse's work for weeks or months. Managers do
not realise the amount of work a nurse has to do, and in many instances have sent in requests for
more frequent visits from the nurse, or for greater attention to their particular school, which at
present it is quite impossible to afford.

The parents of 78 children have been prosecuted, and fines imposed varying from 1s. to 20s.