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SEPTEMBER

The fields are thick with corn and the orchards heavy with fruit. The farmer is busy harvesting and marketing his crops and the city dweller is returning refreshed from his vacation. The children after a long summer in the fields and woods are gathering again in the schoolroom. The minds of these children are going to be developed and strengthened during the next ten months, but what about their bodies? Knowledge is dearly bought at the expense of the power that comes from physical health and vigor. If the child at school is having his strength sapped by stagnant overheated air, his body twisted by badly adjusted desks and seats, his eyes strained by poor light, he might better be out on the playground than at school.

The State of New York recognizes these dangers and has guarded against them by providing for State-wide medical inspection of school children, so that the children will not only be protected from the dangers incident to school life, but will be guarded from any defects due to their own constitutions.

Medical school inspection and what it means

Great numbers of children suffer from physical defects of which their parents are quite unconscious until they progress so far as to cause serious symptoms of disease.

Slight deficiencies in vision lead to eye strain and produce inflammation of the eyelids, fatigue, drowsiness, headache and vertigo, which a pair of properly adjusted glasses would entirely cure. Defects of hearing impede the progress of the child. Enlarged tonsils and adenoids restrict growth and development, cause fretfulness and expose the child to a constant danger of bad colds. Defective teeth, which a little early attention would prevent, lead to great pain and to a constant strain and sapping of vitality and often to serious disease if they are neglected.

It is wisely provided by our State law that the school physician shall examine the children each year to detect the first symptoms of such defects and disorders as these and there are many more so as to secure prompt and early treatment, and wise school boards provide in addition for a school nurse to do follow-up work in the homes and see that the defects are really well treated.

If the school teachers and the parents of New York State will cooperate in this good work, our children will set out on their life journey not only with well-stored minds but with strong and healthy and efficient bodies.

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OCTOBER

Cool, crisp, October days, bright sun on the brown meadows and brilliant red and yellow autumn colors flaming out in the woods and on the hillsides. It is the month when everyone feels how good it is to be alive, yet at this glorious season there are some less pleasant things happening. Among the most important of these is the fact that with the opening of the school term certain diseases show each year a regular periodic increase. Diphtheria, for instance, is at its lowest during the summer and begins to rise in September and goes on increasing during all the fall and winter months.

Diphtheria a controllable disease

Diphtheria is one of the diseases which we understand most thoroughly and can most certainly prevent and cure.

The reason why it is so hard to check many communicable diseases is that the germs are often spread by well people called "carriers" who cannot be detected and isolated as the sick people can. In diphtheria, however, the bacteriologist can detect these carriers quite easily and certainly by examining a culture taken from the throat. When diphtheria breaks out in a family or a school, it is a simple matter to find the carriers and the people who have become infected and are going to come down with the disease, and care for them as one would for the cases already sick.

Furthermore, diphtheria is one of the diseases for which we have a definite and specific cure in antitoxin. The serious symptoms and death in the disease diphtheria are caused by the poison or toxin formed by the germ. The antitoxin which neutralizes and makes the toxin harmless is supplied free by the State Department of Health to physicians throughout the State, and if it is used early it is practically certain to cure the disease.

Early use of antitoxin

In all cases of sore throat it is wise for the physician to take cultures and send them to the city or county laboratory or to Albany for examination, to be sure whether the disease is diphtheria or not. A dose of antitoxin administered at once in suspicious cases, without waiting for the report, will avoid the grave danger of fatal results always present if this remedy is not used. When other children have been exposed cultures will show whether diphtheria bacilli are present or not, and if so the antitoxin may be given in time to ward off even the beginning of an attack. The Health Officer always has antitoxin and culture tubes.

It seems a pity when all this can be done so simply, that it is not done in the case of the 1800 children who die of diphtheria in New York State each year. We must prevent these needless deaths.

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