Civics and Health

Deadly fevers, the plague, black death, cholera, malaria, smallpox, taught mankind invaluable lessons. Millions of human beings died before the mind of man devoted itself to pre...

When a grammar-school boy I learned from the game "Quotations" that Louis Agassiz, scientist, had written the sentence with which I introduce a final appeal for living that will...

"Have their teeth attended to first, and many of the eye defects will disappear." This was an unexpected contribution to the debate upon free eyeglasses for the school children...

Wherever the Stars and Stripes fly over school buildings it is made compulsory to teach the evils of alcoholism. For nearly a generation the great majority of school children of...

Two things will disclose the strength or weakness of a bank and the soundness or unsoundness of a nation's banking policy, namely, a financial crisis or an expert audit. A searc...

No profession, excepting possibly the ministry, is regarded with greater deference than the medical profession. Our ancestors listened with awe and obedience to the warnings and...

If the historian Lecky was right in saying that the greatest triumphs of the nineteenth century were its sanitary achievements, the Lecky of the twenty-first century will probab...

In making a health programme as in making a boat, a garden, or a baseball team, the first step is to look about and see what material there is to work with. A baseball team will...

"With the approval of the President and with the coöperation of the Department of Agriculture,[15] the [national quarantine] service has undertaken to prepare a complete report...

Compulsory education laws, the gregarious instinct of children, the ambition of parents, their self-interest, and the activities of child-labor committees combine to-day to insu...

Wherever school children's eyes have been examined, from six to nine out of thirty are found to be nearsighted, farsighted, or otherwise in need of attention. A child is dismiss...

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 secr...

To call the movement for better factory conditions the "humanizing of industry" implies that modern industry not influenced by that movement is brutalized. The brutalizing of in...

Laws define rights. Men enforce them. For definitions we go to books. For record of enforcement we go to acts and to conditions.[3] What health rights a community pretends to en...

There is no sacred right to work when our work involves injury to ourselves and to our neighbor. Work at the expense of health is an unjustifiable tax upon the state. It is the...

In forty-five states and territories the teaching of hygiene with special reference to alcohol and tobacco is made compulsory. To hygiene alone, of the score of subjects found i...

For every school-teacher or school physician responsible for the welfare of children at school, there are fifty or more parents responsible for the physical welfare of children...

_A boy without play means a father without a job. A boy without physical training means a father who drinks. When people have wholesome, well-disciplined bodies there will be le...

"Dhrugs," says Dock O'Leary, "are a little iv a pizen that a little more iv wud kill ye. Ye can't stop people fr'm takin' dhrugs, an' ye might as well give thim somethin' that w...

Nervousness of teacher and pupil deserves special mention. So universal is this physical defect that we take it for granted, especially for teachers. Teachers themselves feel th...

Scientists agree that the human brain is superior to the animal brain, not because it is heavier, but because it is finer and better supplied with nerves. As one writer has said...

Education's highest aim is to train us to do the right thing at the right moment without having to think. The technic of musician, stenographer, artist, electrician, surgeon, or...

2. _Effort to secure establishment of such a system of school records and reports_ as will disclose automatically significant school facts,--e.g. regarding backward pupils, trua...

Patent medicines and other forms of quackery could not pay such enormous dividends unless there was some truth in their claims; unless their victim found some beneficial return...

Recently I traveled five hundred miles to address an audience on methods of fitting health remedies to local health needs. I told of certain dangers to be avoided, of results th...

One of the red-letter days of my life was that on which I learned that I could not have inherited tuberculosis from two uncles who died of consumption. For years I had known tha...

The president of Princeton University declares that for several decades we have given education that does not instruct and instruction that does not educate. Others tell us that...

The argument for _getting things done_ presumes adequate active machinery, official and private, for _doing things_ that schools are being urged to do. The chapter on Department...

The term "school hygiene" generally suggests no other school than the public school. State laws say nothing about compulsory hygiene in military academies, ladies' seminaries, o...

If children are taught that the most effective way of combating alcoholism is to insure the enforcement of existing laws and to profit from lessons taught by such enforcement; i...

In passing it is worth while to note that in large cities teachers are frequently forced to choose between bad ventilation and street noises. From Boston comes the suggestion th...

"Teachers, gentlemen, no less than pupils, have a heaven-ordained right to work so adjusted that the highest possible physical condition shall be maintained automatically." This...

Among remedies for preventable disease and preventable poverty, the following was urged at a national conference for the betterment of social conditions: "We have been too prudi...

"It is not necessarily vicious or harmful to soothe excited nerves." This editorial comment explains, even if it condemns while trying to justify, the tobacco habit. To soothe e...

"Men have died, from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love"--_nor for work_. Work of itself never killed anybody nor made anybody sick. Work has caused worry...

Governor Hughes, in his address to the students in Gettysburg College, pleaded for such lives that strength would be left for the years of achievement. How many men and women ca...

Many of the elements of the machinery outlined in the preceding chapter already exist in New York City. All of them brought together, either by amalgamation or by proper coördin...

The presence of adenoids is a frequent cause of both slight and aggravated deafness. Of 156 deaf mutes examined 59 per cent had adenoids, while only 6 per cent of the general ru...

It is usually considered futile to attempt to defeat the devil with his own methods, because he knows so much better how to use them. But abuse does not do away with use, and th...

The popular arguments for free meals, free relief, free medical treatment at school, are based upon the assumption that there are but two ways to travel, one leading to a physic...

Last year a conference on the physical welfare of school children was told by a woman principal: "Of course we need physicians to examine our children and to teach the parents,...

What is commonly considered abnormal brightness in a school child is often a tendency to live an abnormal physical life. Being a child bookworm means that time is spent indoors...

a. Does failure or backwardness in studies lead to additional study hours or to regrading? b. Are there too many subjects? c. Are the recitation periods too long? d. Are the exe...

before school? e. Do unclean clothes vitiate the atmosphere? f. Do unclean persons vitiate the atmosphere? g. Does bad breath vitiate the atmosphere? h. Are pupils and parents t...

Cash prizes of one thousand dollars each are offered: (1) for the best evidence of effective work in the prevention or relief of tuberculosis by any voluntary association since...

ventilation? d. Are lockers or hooks in the halls or in the basement? e. Have you ever thought of the disciplinary and social value of cheap coat hangers to prevent wrinkling an...

a. Is there open ventilation? b. Is it used in the daytime? c. Is it used at night? d. Is it used during the summer? e. Is it monopolized by the larger children? f. Is it used o...

In New York City there is a committee called the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children. The word "welfare" was used rather than "condition" because the committee...