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During the year 24 other delicate and debilitated school children were sent
for varying periods to Boarding Open-Air Schools, and 19 were recommended
for convalescent treatment.
During 1948 there were only two blind children in Barking who needed
special schooling and they were both away at special Residential Schools.
Altogether there are in Barking 7 deaf children needing special education;
one of these is at a Residential School while the other six attend the Tunmarsh
Lane Special Day School for partially deaf children, and anyone who has seen the
painstaking and devoted work bestowed on children in special deaf schools will
know what a boon these schools are and what a debt of gratitude is due to those
who teach in them.
HEART DISEASE
Question:—What are "growing pains" ?
Answer:—In the first instance let me say that growing pains have nothing
to do with growing at all.
When I was a boy and children complained of aches and pains in the arms
and legs, their parents put them off by saying that they were only "growing pains."
Not only can we say that growing pains are not due to growing and oftentimes
are not very painful, but sometimes it is these little pains that are by no means
painful which are the most important of all. These pains are often so trivial that
no-one feels inclined to take much notice of them, but your doctor is worried about
them, not because they are painful but because they are rheumatic and—indeed—
may be said to be one of the signs of rheumatic fever and can oftentimes be
associated with rheumatic heart disease.
The trouble is that however slight the damage to the heart, the heart never
returns quite to normal again and with each successive bout of " a little feverish "
the heart is still further damaged and never
gets back to what it was before the attack.
Now this I have written to show how
important even trivialities can be, but I
want to say something on the opposite side.
Many people, when they hear that their
child has anything wrong to do with the
heart, immediately think that the child
should be wrapped in cotton wool. Now
this is not the case. The heart has a tremendous reserve and even if it be imperfect
it is all the better for reasonable exercise and work so long as the heart is not
actually in a phase of active inflammation.
HEART DISEASE
Number of children at Hospital
Schools 1 only
Number of children at Faircross
Day Special School 7
Some authorities have appointed a specialist in heart diseases, who comes and
visits their clinics; what we do is to refer our cases to the Consultant at the
Oldchurch Hospital, where cases of heart disease in children needing the advice
of a specialist are dealt with.
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