fore the need for _periodic tests_ by principal, superintendent,
and school board, _to determine the continuing fitness_ of a teacher to
do the special task assigned to her, based upon physical evidence of
her own vitality and of her favorable influence upon her pupils' health
and enjoyment of school life. Shattered nerves due to overwork may
explain a teacher's shouting: "You are a dirty boy. Your mother is a
dirty woman and keeps a dirty store where no decent people will go to
buy." A physical examination of that unfortunate teacher would probably
show that she ought to be on leave of absence, rather than, by her
overwork and loss of control, to cause the boys of her class to feel
what one of them expressed: "Grandmother, if she spoke so of my mother
I would strike her."

Just as there should be a central bureau to count and correct the open
mouths and closed minds that clog the little old red schoolhouse of the
country, so a central bureau should discover in the city teacher as
well as in the country teacher the ailments more serious than
tuberculosis that pass from teacher to pupil; slovenliness, ugly
temper, frowning, crossness, lack of ambition, cynicism,--these should
be blackballed as well as consumption, contagious morphine habit, and
contagious skin disease. Crooked thinking by teacher leads to crooked
thinking by pupil. Disregard of health laws by teacher encourages
unhygienic living by pupils. A man whose fingers are yellow, nerves
shaky, eyes unsteady, and mind alternately sleepy and hilarious from
cigarettes, cannot convey pictures of normal, healthy physical living,
nor can he successfully teach the moral and social evils of nicotinism.
Both teacher and pupil have a right to the periodic physical
examination of teachers that will give timely warning of attention
needed. Until there is some system for giving this right to all
teachers in private, parochial, charitable, and public schools, we
shall produce many nervous, acrid, and physically threadbare teachers,
where we should have only teachers who inspire their pupils with a
passion for health by the example of a good complexion, sprightly step,
bounding vitality, and forceful personality born of hygienic living.

PART III. COOePERATION IN MEETING HEALTH OBLIGATIONS

CHAPTER XVI

EUROPEAN REMEDIES: DOING THINGS AT SCHOOL

Recently I traveled five hundred miles to address an audience on
methods of fitting health remedies to local health