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Hospital. Treatment was given in 65 cases and was uniformly satisfactory.
The Committee took into consideration the expediency of
making treatment more easily available to Tottenham school children
suffering from this distressing complaint, causing absence from school,
as it does, for very lengthy periods, and determined to establish a
centre of their own. Two sessions a week will be devoted by Dr.
Kempster, of Harley Street, to X-Ray administration at the Committee's
centre, and it is anticipated that Ringworm in the Council's schools will
be regarded soon as a thing of the past. To Nurse Johns, who has
already had very considerable experience in X-Ray work, will be allotted
the duty of waiting upon Dr. Kempster at the Clinic. The establishment
of this clinic is regarded as a distinct advance in the Committee's
medical scheme.
DENTAL CLINIC.
Unfortunately, the work of the Dental department has been
seriously hampered by the fact that considerable intervals have elapsed
between the resignation of the Committee's dentists and the appointment
and taking over of the duties by their successors. Mr. Masters,
the part-time dentist who carried out most efficiently the duties of school
dentist during the absence on military service of Mr. Taylor, the Committee's
full time dentist, resigned his post on March 31st. Mr. Taylor
returned to duty on April 1st, and continued in the Committee's service
until June 14th, when he left to engage in private practice. Mrs. Warey
was appointed to succeed him and commenced her duties on Sept. 1st,
but was obliged for health reasons to resign, after two months service,
and for the rest of the year there was no dentist in your Committee's,
employment. The work at the dental clinic has thus fallen seriously
into arrear and a large percentage of the children found on examination;
to require dental treatment are little likely to receive it. This should'
not be so. Decayed and irregular teeth mean insufficient mastication
and insalivation of food, the ingestion of decaying matter and resulting
digestive disturbance, poisoning in greater or less degree of the system,
and general undermining of health and predisposition to disease.
There are two dental centres, the principal centre being at Bruce
Castle, the second at Culvert Road School.
The whole time services of a nurse (Nurse Pickbum) are devoted
to waiting upon the dentist at the inspections at school and at the Treatment
Centres. The dental inspections are distinct and separate from
the routine medical inspections. The dentist visits the Infants Departments