ad teeth as the children of the great
metropolis, then the army of children needing attention would be seven
out of ten, or over 14,000,000.

Whether these figures overstate or understate the truth, the school
authorities of the country should find out. The chances are that the
school in which you are particularly interested is no exception. To
learn what the probable number needing attention is, divide your total
by ten and multiply the result by seven.

The seriousness of every trouble and its particular relation to school
progress and to the general public health will be explained in
succeeding chapters. The point to be made here is that the examination
of the school child discloses in advance of epidemics and breakdowns
the children whose physical condition makes them most likely to "come
down" with "catching diseases," least able to withstand an attack, less
fitted to profit fully from educational and industrial opportunity.

The only index to community conditions prejudicial to health that will
make known the child of the well-to-do who needs attention is the
record of physical examination. No other means to-day exists by which
the state can, in a recognized and acceptable way, discover the failure
of these well-to-do parents to protect their children's health and take
steps to teach and, if necessary, to compel the parents to substitute
living conditions that benefit for conditions that injure the child.

Among the important health rights that deserve more emphasis is the
right to be healthy though not "poor." A child's lungs may be weak,
breathing capacity one third below normal, weight and nutrition
deficient, and yet that child cannot contract tuberculosis unless
directly exposed to the germs of that disease. But such a child can
contract chronic hunger, can in a hundred ways pay the penalty for
being pampered or otherwise neglected. Physical examination is needed
to find every child that has too little vitality, no zest for play,
little resistance, even though sent to a private school and kept away
from dirt and contagion.

The New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children
visited fourteen hundred homes of children found to have one or more of
the physical defects shown on the above card. While they found that low
incomes have more than their proper share of defects and of unsanitary
living conditions, yet they saw emphatically also that low incomes do
not monopolize physical defects and