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(b) Above Standard IV., the child with adenoids is found to lag
considerably behind the normal boy in his educational level, the
difference increasing with advance in age.
While the effect below Standard IV. does not appear at first sight to
be obvious, the following analysis of the age-grouping in each standard of
the average child, and of the child with adenoids, shows that in practically
all, including the lower standards, the older children in the class contain
an undue proportion of children with adenoids.
Standard I: 54% of all the children, and 50% of children with adenoids,
were aged 8 years or over.
Standard II.: 42% of all the children, and 52% of children with adenoids,
were aged 9 years or over.
Standard III.: 39% of all the children, and 52% of children with adenoids,
were aged 10 years or over.
Standard IV.: 37% of all the children, and 37% of children with adenoids,
were aged 11 years or over.
Standard V. : 41% of all the children, and 53% of children with adenoids,
were aged 12 years or over.
Standard VI.: 25% of all the children, and 30% of children with adenoids,
were aged 13 years or over.
It is thus clear that:—
Adenoids cause a child of school age to lag behind his fellows in educational
level, the effect becoming particularly serious in the upper standards
of the school.
Summary.
Adenoids is at present found in some degree in some 2 per cent. of
elementary school children, and in less notable degree in a further 1½ per
cent. The development of measures of treatment, such as are afforded at the
Education Committee's throat clinic, has reduced the incidence to perhaps a
third of its former level, and has, at the same time, altered the age incidence,
so that the condition, which would otherwise become increasingly prevalent
up to the age of about 10 years, is now, to all appearances, a disease of the
younger school child.
Adenoids affect boys distinctly more than girls, and it is possible that
in the latter the condition reaches a given degree of severity somewhat later
in school life than in the former.
Adenoids is more prevalent among the children from poorer districts
than among those from more prosperous households; the difference is one
of home rather than of school environment, and the difference originates
probably in the years before the child reaches school age. Various symptoms
associated with adenoids can in a considerable proportion of the cases be
traced to early childhood.
The home circumstances favouring the production of adenoids may be
in part connected with the undue aggregation of persons per room found in
the families in question ; such aggregation must naturally encourage repeated
catarrhal infection of the tissues of the nasopharynx. No association could
be traced between the method of feeding in infancy, or the use of a "comforter,"
and the production of adenoids.
Whatever the factors producing the condition, adenoids are undoubtedly
a factor of importance in diminishing a child's educational capacity.