s, not
essays about "happy teachers--happy pupils," are indispensable if
teachers' health rights are to be protected.

Physical tests are imposed upon applicants for teachers' licenses by
many boards of education. In New York City about three per cent of
those examined are excluded for defects of vision, of hearing, of
probable endurance. Once a teacher, however, there is no further
physical examination,--no way of discovering physical incapacity,
nothing to prevent a teacher from exposing class after class to
pulmonary tuberculosis contracted because of overwork and
underventilation. The certainty of salary increase year by year and of
a pension after the twentieth year will bribe many a teacher to overtax
her own strength and to jeopardize her pupils' health.

Seldom do training schools apply physical tests to students who intend
to become teachers. One young girl says that before starting her normal
course she is going to the physician of the board of education for
examination, so as to avoid the experience of one of her friends, who,
after preparing to be a teacher, was rejected because of pulmonary
tuberculosis. During her normal course no examination will be
necessary. Overwork during the first year may cause pulmonary
tuberculosis, and in spite of her foresight she, too, may be rejected
four years hence.

The advantages of physical examination upon beginning and during the
courses that prepare one for a teacher are so obvious that but little
opposition will be given by prospective teachers. The disadvantages to
teacher and pupil alike of suffering from physical defects are so
obvious that every school which prepares men and women for teachers
should make registration and certification dependent upon passing a
satisfactory physical test. No school should engage a teacher who has
not good proof that she can do the required work without injury to her
own or her pupils' health. Long before physicians can discover
pulmonary tuberculosis they can find depleted vitality which invites
this disease. Headaches due to eye trouble, undernourishment due to
mouth breathing, preventable indigestion, are insidious enemies that
cannot escape the physical test.

Three objections to physical tests for teachers will be urged, but each
loses its force when considered in the light of general experience.

1. _A sickly teacher is often the most efficient teacher in a school or
a county._ It is true that some sickly teachers exert