a powerful
influence over their pupils, but in most instances their influence and
their efficiency are due to powers that exist in spite of devitalizing
elements. Rarely does sickness itself bring power. It must be admitted
that many a man is teaching who would be practicing law had his health
permitted it. Many a woman's soul is shorn of its self-consciousness by
suffering. But even in these exceptional instances it is probable that
children are paying too dearly for benefits directly or indirectly
traceable to defects that physical tests would exclude.

2. _There are not enough healthy candidates to supply our schools._
This is begging the question. In fact, no one knows it is true. On the
contrary, it is probable that the teacher's opportunity will make even
a stronger appeal to competent men and women after physical soundness
and vitality are made conditions of teaching,--after we all believe
what leading educators now believe, that the highest fulfillment of
human possibilities requires a normal, sound body, abounding in
vitality.

3. _Examination by a physician, especially if a social acquaintance, is
an unnecessary embarrassment._ The false modesty that makes physical
examination unwelcome to many adults, men as well as women, is easily
overcome when the advantages of such examination are understood. It is
likewise easy to prove to a teacher that the loss of time required in
having the examination is infinitesimal compared with the loss of time
due to ignoring physical needs. The programme for school hygiene
outlined in Chapter XXVII, Part IV, assumes that state and county
superintendents will provide for the examination of teachers as well as
of pupils.

[Illustration: TEACHERS WILL PREFER PHYSICAL EXAMINATIONS TO
FORCED VACATIONS
Boston Society for Relief and Study of Tuberculosis]

Because the health of others furnishes a stronger motive for preventive
hygiene than our own health, it is probable that the general
examination of teachers will come first as the result of a general
conviction that unhealthy teachers positively injure the health of
pupils and retard their mental development. Children at school age are
so susceptible and imitative that their future habits of body and mind,
their dispositions, their very voices and expressions, are influenced
by those of their teachers. Experts in child study say that a child's
vocal chords respond to the voices and noise about him before he is
able