View report page

73
In considering this table two things must be borne in mind. In the first
place the non-Jewish schools on the whole are worse lighted and less hygienic
generally than the Jewish schools, yet the incidence of visual defect, and particularly
the graver forms of visual defect, is immensely greater in the Jewish children.
In the second place, every survey hitherto made of the vision of school children
has shown the incidence of visual defect to be higher in girls than in boys. This
holds in the Whitechapel area in the case of the non-Jewish children, but in the
Jewish schools the practically universal experience is reversed and there is a
markedly greater preponderance of visual defect and especially of graver forms
on boys as compared with girls.
Attention has been drawn from time to time to the effect upon boys in Jewish
schools of the long hours in the evening spent in studying Hebrew. The returns
here given seem not only to show that the long hours of evening study intensify
visual defect in Jewish boys but also to support the "hot-bed theory," that excessive
use of the eyes in childhood, especially under unhygienic conditions is a
powerful cause generally of deterioration of vision. It thus clinches the
argument consistently maintained in these reports that the greater incidence
in general of visual defect upon girls is due to the special strain placed upon
their eyes by fine sewing and other indoor occupations from which boys in general
escape.
Heart defects
and anæmia.
Much attention is being paid to the incidence of rheumatic manifestions, in
school children in London at the present time, by the voluntary organisations
concerned in the case of invalid children, by the physicians at the great hospitals
and by the Government research departments. Special arrangements have been
made for the following-up of children on the return to school from illness of a
rheumatic nature and the help of the Council's care organisation has been widely
sought and freely given. The serious manifestations of rheumatism in children
of school age fall not so much upon the joints and skeletal structures as upon the
heart and nervous system. 5,384 children in the age groups were recorded as
suffering from heart trouble. This number is 2.79 per cent. of those examined,
compared with 2.6 per cent. in 1923, 2.8 in 1922, 3.7 in 1921, and 4.l per cent. in
1920. Heart trouble still falls most heavily upon girls of 12 amongst whom heart
defects was noted in 3.78 per cent., as compared with 2.81 per cent. in boys of the
same age.
Under the conditions in which children must be inspected, it is often not
possible to differentiate between what used to be called organic disease and functional
disease; indeed, most of the observers do not attempt to do so. Moreover,
the theoretical distinctions are tending to disappear and more attention is paid to
the behaviour of the heart under strain, such as abnormal increase in rapidity
during exercise and persistence of the disturbed condition in the resting period
after exercise, than to the presence of abnormal sounds on auscultation during
rest. In about one-sixth of the returns a distinction was attempted between
functional and organic disease and in these cases about twice as many functional
as organic defects were returned.
Anaemia was recorded in 5,767 cases, this being 2.99 per cent., compared with
2.6 per cent. in 1923, 3 per cent. in 1922 and 3.7 per cent. in 1921.
It was a year of unusual absence of sunshine and no one would have been
surprised if the increase in anaemia over the amount recorded in 1923 had been greater
than the figures show. As with heart disease, anaemia continues to fall most
heavily upon the twelve-year old girls of whom 3.39 per cent. were returned as
anaemic.
Lung
disease.
6,510 children were recorded with lung disease other than tuberculosis, of
whom the largest proportion were entrant infants suffering from bronchitic trouble.
The proportion found is the same as in 1923.