Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
[Illustration: THE BEST INHERITANCE IS A MOTHER WHO KNOWS HOW TO
KEEP HER BABY WELL]
The topics dealt with in the report refer to only a partial list of
conditions that need to be carefully studied before we can know what
environment heredity we are preparing for those who follow us:
I. AS TO BABIES
Training of mothers, provident societies and maternity funds,
feeding of infants, milk supply, milk depots, sterilization and
refrigeration of milk, effect of mother's employment upon infant
mortality, still births, cookery, hygiene and domestic economy,
public nurseries, creches.
II. AS TO CHILDREN
Anthropometric measurements, sickness and open spaces, medical
examination of school children, teeth, eyes, and ears, games and
exercises for school children, open spaces and gymnastic
apparatus, physical exercise for growing girls and growing boys,
clubs and cadet corps, feeding of elementary school children,
partial exemption from school, special schools for "retarded"
children, special magistrate for juvenile cases, juvenile smoking,
organization of existing agencies for the welfare of lads and
girls, education, school attendance in rural districts, defective
children.
III. AS TO LIVING AND WORKING CONDITIONS
Register of sickness, medical certificates as to causes of death,
overcrowding, building and open spaces, register of owners of
buildings, unsanitary and overcrowded house property, rural
housing, workshops, coal mines, etc., medical inspection of
factories, employment of women in factories, labor colonies,
overfatigue, food and cooking, cooking grates, adulteration, smoke
pollution, alcohol, syphilis, insanity.
IV. AS TO HEALTH MACHINERY
Medical officers of health, local, district, and national boards,
health associations.
Scientists of the next generation will continue to differ as to
heredity truths and heredity bugaboos unless records are kept now,
showing the physical condition of school children and of applicants for
work certificates and for civil service and army positions. The British
investigators declared that "anthropometric records are the only
accredited tests available, and, if collected on a sufficient scale,
they would constitute the supreme criterion of physical deterioration,
or the reverse.... The school population and the classes coming under
the administration of the Factory Acts offer ready material for the
immediate application of such tests." In addition to the physical tests
proposed in other chapters, there is great educational opportunity in
the records of private and public hospitals. Every nation, every state,
and every city should enlist all its educational and scientific forces
to ascertain in what respects social efficiency is endangered by
physical deficiencies that can be avoided only by restricting
parenthood, and the environmental deficiencies that can be avoided by
efficient health machinery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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