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45
The children inspected by the dental surgeons are spread over all ages and are
not confined, as are the medical inspection returns, to the four routine age groups.
Some improvement on 1943 is noted, as a result of medical inspections, in the
condition of the hair, but, on the other hand, the school nurses' inspections showed
a slight deterioration, since the percentage reported by the latter as verminous rose
to 6.39, compared with 6.19 in 1943. Skin diseases show a declining incidence,
compared with 1943, but the percentage (1.5) is still above that of 1938, which was
1.0 per cent.
Cleanliness
Two of the Borough Councils in west London continued to provide tree shower
baths at the borough first-aid posts, 11,538 baths were thus given in 1944. One of
the Council's school nurses attends these bathing centres. Verminous children are
sent to be cleansed before using the baths.
Bathing of
schoolchildren
The arrangements described in the report for 1942, generously made by a private
concern for giving warm shower baths by means of a mobile bathing unit, continued
until the middle of June when, owing to the flying bomb attacks, they were suspended
until November, finally ceasing in December, when the unit was transferred for work
in the liberated European countries. In one typical borough (Bermondsey), in
1944, 6,713 warm shower baths were given, bringing to 51,314 the total baths in
that borough since the inception of the scheme.

At the end of the year, 9 centres were open with accommodation for 180 children
for the treatment of stammering and other speech defects. The number of children
who attended these centres at some time during the twelve months was 439, of whom
32 were discharged as cured or very much improved.
Speech
defects
The in-patient school centres for the treatment of defects of ear, nose and
throat ceased to function at the outbreak of war, but the pre-war arrangements
for the treatment of such defects were re-introduced at Belgrave Hospital in
1940 and the South-Eastern Hospital for Children in 1943. Of the 689 children
treated at these hospitals, 457 were operated on for the removal of adenoids and/or
enlarged tonsils. In 1938 the number of such operations carried out at 15 centres
or hospitals included in the Council's school medical scheme was 8,894. Throughout
the war, children in need of operative treatment for these conditions have been
referred to the Council's general hospitals and dealt with there. No record is
available of the number of school children so dealt with.
Ear, nose and
throat treatment
Ihe unit from Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, was transferred (with 156
patients) to Yorkshire in July owing to enemy attacks. While in Yorkshire, 129
children were admitted from London. The long journey thus found necessary was
not to the advantage of the child patients, and, in many instances, children whose
Rheumatism