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Thus the arduous work of the school nursing staff is bearing fruit, and the steady
and cumulative effect of this hygienic struggle is seen in the fact that in 1913 the
percentage of girls with clean heads was only 67.2. Much of the work of the school
nurses is educational, and a slow and steady improvement which is lasting and
permanent in character is to be preferred to a more rapid improvement due to
compulsion, which would prove evanescent when the compelling force was relaxed.
It is likely that the full benefit of the work during the past decade will be reaped
only when the children dealt with become the fathers and mothers of a new generation.
Verminous bodies.
While the entrenchments of the head louse are difficult to storm, those of the
bodies. body louse are much more vulnerable. Consequently by means of the Council's
cleansing schemes the body louse has been virtually driven out of the schools. In
1913 over 2 per cent, of the children in the schools were infested with body lice, in
fact, the number with body lice actually exceeded those with live head vermin.
In 1923 only 402 children were found with body vermin, that is much less than one
child to every two schools and only 0.2 per cent.
Teeth.
As regards the condition of their teeth the entrant children proved to be rather
better than the entrants of 1922. This may very likely be due to the attention to
dental conditions now given at some of the Infant Welfare Centres.

In the eight-year-old group a very serious amount of decay and oral sepsis is
found, and the problem most urgently requiring solution is: why are the milk
teeth of these children shed by these processes of suppuration and abscess formation
instead of by aseptic absorption ?
The grave amount of oral disease in the eight year-old-children appears toaccount
for the poorer figures for nutrition which that group invariably yields in
comparison with the others.
The good work of the Council's dental centres is seen in the progressive improvement
of dental conditions in the twelve-year-old group. Although the very
remarkable leaps of the two previous years have not been repeated, yet a satisfactory
improvement is recorded as shown in the following table :—

These figures are obtained from the returns of medical inspection. The
number of teeth obviously decayed is recorded in every case by the school doctor.
The first column contains the percentage of children in whom no decayed teeth are
seen, the second column when less than four carious teeth are returned, and the
third column where four or more carious teeth are recorded.
While not revealing the whole of the dental caries present these are, nevertheless,
comparative figures of great value and serve as a measure of the improvement
resulting from the school dental treatment. During 1921 and 1922 the remarkable-