Aside from direct medical treatment for those diseases that cause deafness, there are other measures available in a program for the prevention of deafness. One of the foremost essentials is the report to the health authorities of all serious diseases that are liable to result in deafness. In this way proper medical care may be secured, and due precautions may be taken to isolate infectious cases. Even with meningitis, which is so hard usually to deal with and which is so severe in its ravages, there is often some concomitant trouble, and if made notifiable in all cases deafness from it might be checked in no inconsiderable measure. The report of births is also especially needed, and as it becomes obligatory in general, with the consequent detection of physical ailments or disabilities, early cases of deafness may come increasingly to notice, and timely treatment may be availed of. Particular attention is likewise necessary in respect to the medical examination of school children. The proportion of such children with impaired hearing is not slight, even though no great part of them become totally deaf. A committee on defective eyes and ears of school children of the National Educational Association in 1903 found that of 57,072 children examined in seven cities, 2,067, or 3.6 per cent, were extremely defective in hearing.[24] An investigation of the school children in New York City has disclosed the fact that one per cent have seriously defective hearing.[25] Under proper and adequate medical inspection of schools, not only would the need of treatment for adenoids and similar troubles be brought to light, with the result that a number of incipient cases might be stopped in time, but in some instances of deafness already acquired beneficial treatment might be possible.[26] There is thus a considerable sphere for action towards the prevention of adventitious deafness both by legislation and by education. For the ultimate solution of its problems, however, we have to look mainly to the medical profession. In recent years medical science has won some great triumphs, and in the field of the prevention of deafness no little may be in store to be accomplished in the years to come.[27] Even now, with more particular attention to the diseases of children, and with stronger insistence upon general sanitary measures, the probabilities are that there is less deafness from certain diseases than formerly--a matter which we are soon to consider.