It is generally believed that New York children must have more defects than children elsewhere. If this assumption is wrong, if children in other parts of the United States are as apt to have eye defects, enlarged tonsils, and bad 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.