View report page

41
press, and by pushing pseudo-scientific representatives of the firms
supplying the quack remedies.
It is better if an evil cannot be remedied not to ''do something,"
but to do nothing. A sham remedy, it may be disguises, but does
not lessen the harm which threatens, while by pacifying those alive
to the danger, real or supposed, it lulls to a sense of security which
is dangerous if the evil is actual and not imaginary.
I have for these reasons, having ground for thinking that
the vaunted so-called disinfectants as ordinarily applied to school
floors were useless, advised that they be not resorted to.
I have, however, conducted a number of observations and
experiments on the use of a number of dust allaying substances
which applied to floors are claimed so to affect the dust as to prevent
it from rising and so contaminating the atmosphere even during the
most vigorous sweeping.
Miss Ethel Cook, the Senior Assistant Lady Health Visitor, has
most carefully and skilfully carried out the observations under my
direction, and I am indebted to her, not only for the painstaking
manner in which this has been done, but for many valuable suggestions
in the conduct of the experiments.
It was arranged that observations should be made upon good
smooth hard wood block floors, and upon rough soft wood boarded
flooring.
The method ultimately adopted for testing and recording the
results was the following : ordinary photographic plates were stripped
of their films and immediately before being exposed were coated
with a rapidly drying film of mastic varnish. During the whole
time when a floor was being swept, these plates were exposed on a
school desk near the middle of the room and allowed to remain