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8
A consecutive series of 200 boys of 16 years of age examined between the years
1929 and 1931 was compared with a similar consecutive series examined under the
same conditions between 1905 and 1908.

Cleanliness. The percentage of children found free even from traces of nits or pediculi in
the hair was 95.8 and of those free from traces of body vermin, 99.9. For some years
past the condition of the hair of the 12-year old girls has been taken as the criterion
of cleanliness, and it has been pointed out that there has been a gradual improvement
from 67.2 per cent. free in 1913 to 75 per cent. in 1923, 91.9 per cent. in 1930, and
93.5 per cent. in 1931. This figure has still further increased in 1932, when the new
high level of 95.8 per cent. has been obtained.
This result reflects very great credit upon the work of the school nurses, and even
gives fresh hopes to those optimists among us who look forward to the total extinction
in our time of the louse as a human parasite at any rate in London.
It is already rare for the school doctor to find a child actually infested with
body vermin; a condition which 3 to 4 per cent. of the elementary school children
exhibited in the early days of medical inspection, but is now only to be found in one
in a thousand.
This remarkable progress in freeing the children of the elementary schools from
parasitic infestation has been accompanied by the raising of the general level of care,
of tidiness and of happiness, and forms by no means the least of the benefits which
the school medical service has brought to the schools, the teachers, and the population
generally.

* Serious decay = four or more carious teeth requiring treatment.
From this table it will be seen that, while among entrants there is only a slight
improvement since 1924 in the proportion of serious dental decay, among the 8-year