“New York City will spend in 1910 $6,500 for making over twenty rooms in regular buildings, a first step in an entirely new plan of ventilation, which will eventually give outdoor air to all children, sick or well.”[8] [8] Bureau of Municipal Research. Speaking generally, America is one of the last of the civilized nations to deal with the subject of the medical inspection of school children upon a comprehensive and national scheme. But once aroused to the needs, it is safe to say that the nation will speedily educate parents to correct such home conditions as reduce the child’s ability to profit from schooling, and to persuade governments to see that safe homes are provided. It will be easy to convince the taxpayer that it is cheaper to provide such care than to neglect the future parent and citizen, for it is easy to prove that medical inspection in our schools returns large dividends on small investments. Dr. Luther Gulick says that it seems probable, though only a guess, that the total annual expenditure for medical inspection of schools in the United States at the present time is perhaps $500,000. The money saved by enabling thousands of children to do one year’s work in one year, instead of in two or three years, would greatly exceed the total expense of examining all children in all boroughs.[9] [9] Quoted in Report on National Vitality, p. 123. The health of all our school children should be conserved by a system of competent medical inspection which should secure the correction of defects of eyes, ears, teeth, as well as defects due to infection or malnutrition. The statistics of medical inspection in public schools tell a pitiful tale wherever it has been tried: thirty or forty per cent of the children are found with defective or diseased eyes, ten to twenty per cent with distorted spines, fifteen per cent with throat and nose troubles, all of which directly affect their intellectual proficiency. When these deficiencies are discovered and reported to the parents, such is the apathy of disbelief that seventy-five per cent of the cases usually go unattended; therefore the school nurse, who follows the case home and explains the needs and sets forth the penalties, has become a necessity. The parent who permits his child to go to school physically unfitted to profit from school opportunity is not only injuring his own child, but is injuring his neighbor’s child, and is taxing that neighbor without the latter’s consent.