g physical defects and by reducing vitality.
Medical treatment at school refers to steps taken under the school
roof, or by school funds, to remove the defects or check the infection
brought to light by medical inspection and medical examination.
Treatment is not an index. In separate chapters are given the reasons
for and against trying to treat at school symptoms of causes that exist
outside of school. When, how often, and by whom inspection and
examination should be made is also discussed later. The one point of
this chapter is this: if we really want to know where in our community
health rights are endangered, the shortest cut to the largest number of
dangers is the physical examination of children at school,--private,
parochial, reformatory, public, high, college.

Apart from the advantage to the community of locating its health
problems, physical examination is due every child. No matter where his
schooling or at whose expense, every child has the right to advance as
fast as his own powers will permit without hindrance from his own or
his playmates' removable defects. He has the right to learn that
simplified breathing is more necessary than simplified spelling, that
nose plus adenoids makes backwardness, that a decayed tooth multiplied
by ten gives malnutrition, and that hypertrophied tonsils are even more
menacing than hypertrophied playfulness. He has the right to learn that
his own mother in his own home, with the aid of his own family
physician, can remove his physical defects so that it will be
unnecessary for outsiders to give him a palliative free lunch at
school, thus neglecting the cause of his defects and those of
fellow-pupils.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Sir John E. Gorst in _The Children of the Nation_ reads the index of
the health of school children in the United Kingdom; John Spargo, in
_The Bitter Cry of the Children_, and Simon N. Patten in _The New Basis
of Civilization_, suggest the necessity for reading the index in the
United States and for heeding it.

PART II. READING THE INDEX TO HEALTH RIGHTS

CHAPTER V

MOUTH BREATHING

If the physical condition of school children is our best index to
community health, who is to read the index? Unless the story is told in
a language that does not require a secret code or cipher, unless some
one besides the physician can read it, we shall be a very long time
learning the health needs of even our largest cities, and until
doomsday learning the