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DENTAL EXAMINATIONS
Number of children examined
at school 5,364
Number of children examined
at clinics 4,899
Number of children found to
require treatment 7,982
DENTAL TREATMENTS
Number of Fillings:
Permanent teeth 4,296
Temporary teeth 2,178
Number of Extractions:
Permanent teeth 1,350
Temporary teeth 3,980
Number of Other Operations:
Permanent teeth 5,777
Temporary teeth 2,365
Number of Dentures Supplied 37
Number of Orthodontic Appliances
Supplied 265
Total number of Attendances
for Treatment 14,463
The child should have an
early introduction to the dentist,
no matter whether the mother
thinks there is something wrong
or not; the child thus becomes
familiar with dental inspection
routine at an early age and
commences to gain confidence
which is essential to successful
child dentistry.
In conclusion, I would add
one word "DON'T" for the
benefit of parents, teachers and
all who have anything to do with
child welfare. DON'T frighten
the child with fantastic stories
of the horrors of dentistry. I
once heard a Head Teacher
tell his boys at a routine dental
inspection: "You wait until
you get to the clinic, the dentist
will pull your head off." I hasten
to add that this incident was not in Barking. Such a "joke" might be
well taken by 99 per cent. of the scholars, but there is always the chance
of the presence of the nervous child who might thus receive his or her
first horror of the dentist."
Question:—What are the chances that my little daughter,
now aged five, will have to wear glasses before she leaves school?
Answer:—The chances are about one in fifteen.
Will you notice that the question is about a little girl. It is a curious
thing that mothers are not quite so worried about their boys having to wear
glasses, but I have found—particularly with girls who are growing up and
are about fifteen years of age—that there are a number of them who do
not want to wear glasses and show considerable ingenuity in trying to get
an opinion from someone or another that they need not wear glasses, and if
anybody is so soft-hearted as to say they need not wear them all the time
it practically means they wear their glasses none of the time.
Curiously enough short-sighted children take to their glasses better
than those suffering from other eye defects. Proper glasses do put them into
an altogether different world, and they find they cannot do without them,
but with regard to some other defects it is sometimes difficult to get
children to wear the glasses they ought to wear.
The history of the Eye Service in Barking is, in its way, romantic.
Elsewhere I have told of how the Service commenced in the old Moot
Hall; the stairway to the upstairs hall was very dark, and what they did
was for the child to sit on one stair; the doctor to stand on some stairs
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