View report page

63
Eight mothers have been fitted with artificial dentures and nine
more are at present under treatment.
C. E. MAINWARING,
School Dentist.
(i) Orthopaedic Treatment.— This form of treatment is the
most successful and encouraging embarked upon by the Education
Committee. The benefits are threefold. In the first place most
satisfactory results accrue to the children who in many instances
show a very remarkable improvement in their condition,
to such an extent is the crippling of most of them remedied
that there is now no need for a Special School for Cripples, and
the feeling is gaining ground that anything in the nature of severe
crippling in a school child will in the future be a rarity; secondly
the mothers gain greatly in time and monetary cost by having
the treatment so readily accessible at the Health Centre and
thirdly the Education Committee secure an advantage in the
uninterrupted attendance of the children at school, except when
they have to undergo an operation at the hospital, where, however,
the education of the children is continued.
In securing these striking results the outlay is comparatively
small, not only in initial cost of apparatus, but in the cost of attendance
of the surgeon once a month and of the masseuse four times
a week.
During the year the surgeon saw on the occasion of his monthly
visits 78 school children for the first time. Only 21 of these can
be classed as cripples, the remainder being cases of round shoulders,
lateral curvature of not too marked an extent and flat-feet. There
were 158 re-inspections of these or other children already undergoing
treatment. Three children were advised operative treatment
which they received at the National Orthopaedic Hospital
at Stanmore, and 40 were advised massage. The attendances for
massage numbered 1,029. Two school children were supplied with
surgical boots and four with other surgical apparatus.
In addition to the school children, 43 children under 5 years
of age were submitted for a first examination by the surgeon,
48 re-inspections being necessary. The attendanoes of those
requiring massage numbered 230. No operations were required for
the children under school age.