that the child
with aggravated St. Vitus's Dance is apt to be cured sooner than the
child who is just "nervous." Teachers cannot know whether twitching
eyes, emotional storms, constant motion of the fingers or feet are due
to chorea, to malnutrition, to eye strain, or to habits acquired in
babyhood or early childhood and continued for the advantage that
accrues when discipline impends. Many a child treasures as his chief
asset in time of trouble the ability to lose his temper, to have a
"fit," to exhibit nervousness that frightens parent, teacher, or
playmate, incites their pity, and wards off punishment. The school
examination will settle once for all whether the trouble can be cured.
The family physician will explain what steps to take.

TESTS OF MALNUTRITION

We Americans were first interested in the physical examination of
school children by exaggerated estimates of the number of children who
are underfed. As fast as figures were obtained for eye defects,
breathing defects, bad teeth, some one was ready to declare that these
were results of underfeeding. Hence the conclusion: give children at
least one meal a day at school. Scientific men began to set us straight
and to give undernourishment a technical meaning,--soft bones, flabby
tissue, under size, anaemia. While too little food might cause this
condition, it was also explained that too much food of the wrong sort,
or even food of the right sort eaten irregularly or hurriedly or
poisoned by bad teeth, might also cause undernourishment, including the
extreme type known as malnutrition. In extreme instances the symptoms
enable an observant teacher who has learned to distinguish between the
pretty hair ribbon and clean collar and the sunken, pale, or hectic
cheek and lusterless eyes to detect the cause. But as with eyes and
nose, an unhealthy condition of nourishment may exist long before
outward symptoms are noticeable. Therefore the value of the periodic
searching examination by the school physician.

[Illustration: SAME AGE, SAME SCHOOL, DIFFERENT NUTRITION]

BONE TUBERCULOSIS; ORTHOPEDIC TESTS

Only recently have we laymen learned that knee trouble, clubfoot, ankle
sores, spine and hip troubles, scrofula, running sores at joints, etc.,
are not hereditary and inevitable, but are rather the direct result of
carelessness on the part of adult consumptives. These conditions in
school are indices of homes and houses where tuberculosis is or has
been acti