"Another great service the nurse rendered us was to bring about a veritable epidemic of school-house improvement. She proved that the physical condition of the school-house was reflected in the physical condition of the children. For example, a poorly lighted and badly ventilated school-house always housed children with eye strain and nervous disorder, and in a school-house having ill-fitting desks were children of poor posture.
"During the summer of that first year the nurse was with us, we conducted so-called 'baby clinics' in the county, one in every township and one in each village. We urged the mothers to bring their children below school age to the clinics, and much the same kind of examination was given them as was given the children of school age. We found that 60 percent of the children of pre-school age were defective."
This is but a sample of the work and experience of hundreds of rural nurses and shows how the nurse is a health teacher in the most effective manner, for she gets into the homes and gives personal help in bringing about better health. She uses the demonstration method in health work just as the home demonstration agent does with food, clothing, and home management. Furthermore, when the nurse is devoted to her work--and most nurses are or they would not stick to so hard a job--she becomes endeared to the people just as does the family doctor, for the help she gives in cases of sickness, accident, and childbirth, when she is of invaluable service to isolated homes who can secure no other help. A slip of a girl--though a well-trained nurse--who commenced work in a nearby community was introduced to her new work with two confinement cases and an accident case the first day, for none of which was a physician obtainable. The Red Cross Nurse in my own county has spent many a night in a farm home in order to get sufficiently acquainted with parents to induce them to allow her to have needed treatment given to their children, and when the parents come to realize the benefit which their children have received from operations on tonsils or adenoids, the fitting of glasses, and similar services, and appreciate the handicap which such defects would have been to them through life, the nurse has a warm place in their hearts and they eagerly support her work.