read at
school are:

1. Inability to breathe through the nose.

2. A chronically running nose, accompanied by frequent nose-bleeds
and a cough to clear the throat.

3. Stuffy speech and delayed learning to talk. "Common" is
pronounced "cobbed"; "nose," "dose"; and "song," "sogg."

4. A narrow upper jaw and irregular crowding of the teeth.

5. Deafness.

6. Chorea or nervousness.

7. Inflamed eyes and conjunctivitis.

The adenoids and large tonsils discovered at school are an index:

1. To children needlessly handicapped in school work.

2. To teachers needlessly burdened.

3. To whole classes held back by afflicted children.

4. To breeding grounds for disease.

5. To homes where children's diseases and tuberculosis are most
likely to break out and flourish.

6. To parents who need instruction in their duty to their
children, to themselves, and to their neighbors, and who are
ignorant of the way in which "catching" diseases originate and
spread.

The riot that occurred when the adenoids of children in a school on the
"East Side" in New York City were removed without the preliminary of
convincing the parents as to the advantages of the operation was merely
a demand for the "right to knowledge," which is never overlooked with
impunity. Reluctance to permit operation on a young child, and the
natural shrinking of a parent at seeing a child under the surgeon's
knife, require the teacher or school physician or nurse to answer fully
the usual questions of the hesitant mother and father.

1. Is the operation necessary? Will the child not outgrow its adenoids?
Usually the adenoid growths atrophy or dry up after the age of puberty.
Adenoids are not uncommon in adults, however. The surgeon general of
the army reports that during the year 1905, out of 3004 operations on
officers and enlisted men in service, there were 225 operations on the
nose, mouth, and pharynx, 103 of which were operations for adenoids and
enlarged or hypertrophied tonsils. Allowing the child to "outgrow"
adenoids may mean not only that he is being subjected to infection
chronically but that his body is allowed to be permanently deformed and
his health endangered. Beginning at the age of the second dentition,
the bones of jaw, nose, throat, and chest are undergoing important
changes--nasal occlusion. Adenoids left to atrophy--if large enough to
cause mouth breathing--may mean atrophy of this developing