View report page

165
type distinctly better and less crowded than those surveyed in house-to-house
inspections; the table indicates the same point clearly in the distribution of
families as to rooms in the two groups. In spite of this, however, there are,
in the households of the children with adenoids, more persons per room in
each size of dwelling—from one room to five rooms inclusive—than in
dwellings of a corresponding size recorded during house-to-house inspections.
The basis for data in the case of the "adenoids" group is small, but is
nevertheless sufficient, in respect at any rate of the larger groups of 3, 4,
and 5-room tenements, to justify the conclusion that:—
There is evidence that the occurrence of adenoids in school children from
working-class homes coincides with an aggregation of persons per room considerably
greater than the average for other houses of the same class.
It is obvious, of course, that such aggregation or crowding can only
be one of a variety of factors influencing the onset of adenoids, and further,
that adenoids can, and do, occur in the absence of any undue crowding.
It is true, also, that the larger number of persons per room in this group
may be merely an expression of the fact that the group is one containing
children in each household, whereas the houses visited during house-to-house
inspections will have contained also childless couples and single lodgers,
thus decreasing the aggregation per room. Nevertheless, the coincidence of
abnormal aggregation and the occurrence of adenoids is significant, and lends
colour to the view that adenoids are favoured by repeated catarrhal infection
of the lymphoid tissue in the nasopharynx, by an infection which would be
concentrated and more often repeated under conditions of crowding in the
home.
Effect on capacity for education.
The following table gives particulars of the grouping according to age
and standard of the school population as a whole in a number of the
schools included in this enquiry, and of the cases of adenoids in these schools.

It would thus appear that—
(a) Below Standard IV., the presence of adenoids does not cause
educational disability to an extent sufficient to keep the child
below the standard normal for his age; but