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58
less as a baby and is put to bed earlier, although sometimes not
nearly as early as he ought to be.
Following the introduction of the Summer Time Act in
1921, an investigation was made into the effect of this Act on the
health of the school child and on the amount of rest and sleep which
the children got in the Winter and Summer. The amount of sleep
required at different ages is stated to be as follows :—|
Four to seven years 12 hours.
Seven to eleven 11 hours.
Eleven to thirteen 10 hours.
Thirteen to fifteen 10 hours.
Fifteen to seventeen 94 hours.
Seventeen to nineteen 9 hours.
In Acton it was found that up to the age of 7 there was no great
deficiency in the amount of sleep which the children got. In
children aged 11-14 also the bulk of the children were having approximately
correct periods of rest. By far the greater number of
children who were not having adequate rest fell in the age groups
7-11. These figures were of course drawn from all the school children
in Acton, not only from those whose home circumstances required
that extra nourishment should be granted them, but it is most
surprising to find that where the results of poverty are apparent
in malnutrition in childhood these effects should be aggravated in
the age group where lack of rest is an additional factor.
The figures quoted for rest sleep for Acton were, of course,
got out some few years ago, but it is unlikely that human nature
has changed so much in the interval as to make the results no
longer applicable. They are, moreover, borne out by observation
and by statistics, that the junior " who comes for examination
for free meals is a poorer specimen than his older brother and sister.
It is not an easy matter to impress on the average mother
that her child needs more sleep, it is so much easier to let the children
run about until they voluntarily seek their beds, than to have
to break them into a new habit of going earl}' to bed.
Aural Report.
The frequency of discharging ears is not a bad index of the
efficiency of medical care in any community, and in a recent number
of the " Lancet " an incident is related which shows the frequency
of the condition in former years. Some twenty years ago a mother
brought one of her children to an out-patient department in a poor