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52
Seabies.
This is a skin disease which has been all too prevalent
amongst school children during the last few years, and one which
has been the cause of the loss of much school time and incidentally
of educational grant. It is a disease that is easily cured
provided that the proper treatment is given and thoroughlycarried
out. At present, however, when every second house is
overcrowded, when adequate bathing facilities are absent in the
affected homes, and when disinfection is neglected it is practically
impossible to stamp out the disease. Added to this is the fact
that in many houses not only is the bedding and furniture infected,
but many adults harbour the complaint, so that even if
children are cured they are speedily re-infected. The problem
requires to be tackled as a whole, and the first step is the erection
of a Cleansing Station where cases—not only the school children
—may be suitably treated. In such a station adequate supplies
of hot water would be available, the treatment would be supervised
and thoroughly carried out, automatic disinfection of homes
would be secured, and a rational scheme with definite hope of
success established. At present no such station is available and
the cost of erecting one has hitherto been insuperable, though
there is a satisfactory disinfecting apparatus awaiting installation.
Meantime, all cases have to be treated at home, and as the details
of the treatment are seldom understood and still more rarely
carried out, the results are highly discouraging. Sufferers from
Scabies are told to use sulphur ointment after a hot bath on two
or at most three successive nights, and then to have a complete
change of clean clothing, the old garments being disinfected.
What actually happens is that the hot bath—the key to the treatment—is
seldom available, fresh outer garments are not supplied,
and the infected clothes are not properly disinfected. As
for the ointment, it is used in excessive quantities and over
extended periods with a view to making up for the other defects
in the treatment, with the result that a sulphur dermatitis, most
difficult to cure, develops.
I have in the past and I do again urge the Education
Authorities to consider the erection of a Cleansing Station, as I
consider school medical work suffers appreciably from the lack
of it. For some years the tendency was, as it ought to be, for