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7
considerable time and labour, but gives many
valuable opportunities for detecting infectious
diseases of a mild character unattended by medical
practitioners, as well as cases of overcrowding,
dilapidated house property and other nuisances.
My attention has also been drawn to matters of
great importance, bearing not only on the health
of the school children, but upon their future usefulness
to society. The duty of a Sanitary Authority
is not necessarily confined to the prevention of
infectious disease, for it takes measures for the
improvement of the general health in paving,
draining, lighting, all indirect aids to a sanatory
state, and I therefore submit that steps taken to
check imperfections in children with a view to
making them more useful citizens come well within
the scope of its work.
Many children attending school are said to be
dull, who, on examination, are found to be suffering
from defective sight, or hearing. Now these
children if systematically examined in early childhood
might be put in the right way to obtain proper
treatment, so that the defects would be minimised
or disappear on approaching adult age. The cost
of working out such a scheme in Kingston would be
infinitesimal, whilst the benefit would be incalculable.
The examination of the teeth of children is also
most important, the decay of teeth in childhood
often leading to the decay of the permanent teeth
and the subsequent dyspeptic trials that lead farther
than is commonly imagined. It also causes much
absence from school for Neuralgia, &c. Such
examination would be more costly than those
previously mentioned, but would repay the expenditure
in the next generation.