Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/662

 638 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and perfected, until at the present time New York may justly lay claim to having perhaps the most efficient system of any large city throughout the whole country.

It was in 1895 that one of New York's medical inspectors was detailed to make a special investigation of this subject, and his report showed such significant and almost startling results that the Board of Health had no trouble in getting the city authorities to grant it a special appropriation to establish a regular corps of school inspectors. 1 The doctor who made this far-reaching and important investigation cited a large number of instances which seemed to show conclusively that the public schools were among the most fruitful sources for the spread of contagious diseases. He found one little fellow, in the midst of desquamating after scarlet fever, who was innocently peeling off large portions of his skin and passing them to his school com- panions as a subject of great interest ! In another instance the spread of trachoma a very prevalent and contagious eye dis- ease was traced directly to the passing of a handkerchief by a schoolgirl who was affected with the disease, along a whole row of pupils. Again, in the large girls' school (Public School No. 12), where there had been a large number of diphtheria cases, the spread of the disease was immediately checked by the dis- infection of the building and a careful inspection of the pupils.

But under the original system the school inspection, as first practiced in New York, only those children suspected by the teachers of having a contagious disease were brought before the doctors. The result was that the health of the school depended more upon the teachers, who possessed no medical knowledge, than on the judgment of the Board of Health inspectors. And the whole system was so poorly organized aud developed, and the department exercised so little control over the doctors, that many of the latter failed to visit their schools regularly every day.

It therefore remained for the present administration to perfect and extend the whole method of school inspection. This was

1 See special report of Dr. George S. Lynde, Report of Board of Health for 1896, PP- 359-63 5 cf. also pp. 56, 57.