View report page

84
(4) Management of home life when the child has returned home.
(5) Recommendation for " Physically defective" schools.
(6) Treatment of diseased tonsils, gum-boils.
(7) Advice to parents on common sense matters, i.e., diet, clothing, midday
rest period, sleeping arrangements, drying of rooms, ventilation, regulation
of exercise, etc.
"When treatment is considered necessary for any other ailment the parent is
advised and facilities are explained. Usually this means referring the case to the
out-patient department where the child is kept under treatment, returning periodically
to the clinic for examination where any question of rheumatism remains.
Arrangements are also made at the hospital for X-rays, blood tests, urine examinations,
and for massage and special exercises in suitable cases.
"If one may judge from the numbers of children referred to the clinic each
week this (autumn) term, the method which has been chosen for the development
of the clinic is justified. The difficulty is to keep the numbers of the new cases
within practicable limits.
"Incidentally this method of obtaining cases is providing the physician in charge
with very difficult and interesting cases of a kind different from that which is mostly
dealt with at the other established rheumatism centres. Little is known of the
clinical picture of the pre-rheumatic state (if it exists in a recognisable form),
and these cases provide a field for research. The main difficulty, as might be expected,
is to find suitable accommodation for the child with sub-acute rheumatism and the
child recovering from an acute attack. But this is a part of the problem of childrheumatism
as a whole, and is not a problem peculiar to the clinic.
"Mrs. Farmer is attached to the Clinic as L.C.C. Organiser."
Age of onset
of
rheumatism.
Dr. Mabel
Russell.

In the majority of the above cases it was possible to elicit the expected history
of vague pains before the onset of the acute attack.
Special Inquiries and Researches.
Assistance has continued to be afforded to the Special Committees of the Board
of Education, especially to those dealing with Visual Defects and Enlarged Tonsils
and Adenoids. Special researches by the staff include the investigation of flat-foot
in school children by Doctors Danvers-Atkinson, Verner Wiley, Jessie Duncan and
Agnes Parson (p. 73); the comparative condition of children living in a demolition
area by Dr. Nairn Dobbie (p. 95); notes on the comparative incidence of defect
in slum children, Dr. Mabel Russell (p. 101); the incidence of oral malformation,
Dr. Livingston and Mr. Ovey (p. 109); the development of refractive errors of the
eye during school life, Dr. J. Hamilton Mcllroy (p. 84); the physical and mental
characteristics of children with high myopia, Dr. Elizabeth M. McVail (p. 87); the
condition of children in the hop fields, Dr. E. J. Boome (p, 90).
Research
into the
changes in
the eye
during
school life.
It is held amongst English ophthalmic surgeons that eyestrain during education
is potent in the development of myopia and that it is of special importance that it
should be avoided in cases which are termed progressive myopia where myopia is
of high degree with a tendency to rapid increase.
Educational methods have, therefore, been worked out, pre-eminently in London,
whereby children with myopia are shielded from strain, and sight saving schools
and classes have been established for ordinary elementary school children and
latterly also for central school and secondary school children.