Corrected Mortality Among Children, Week Ending February 1, 1913. Includes Small Pox, Measles, Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria and Whooping Cough. Deaths According to Cause, Annual Rate per 1,000 and Age, with Meteorology and Number of Deaths in Public Institutions for 14 Weeks. 9. 7. 14. Nov. Nov. Nov. Nov. Nov. Dec. Dec. Dec. Dec. Jan. Jan. Jan. Jan. Feb. 21. 28 4. Week Ending- 2. Annual death-11.59 13.13 12.26 13.65 12.62 14.32 13.44 14.93 rate....... 14.15 14.75 14.68 15.01 14.19 13.98 3 I 8 26 22 5 16 17 26 14 25 21 Mean barometer. 29.86 29.97 29.87 29.91 29.93 30.02 29.96 29.81 29.93 29.69 30.16 30.19 30.04 29.84 Mean humidity.. 62. 63.6 63.6 55.3 61.7 71.7 52.9 64.9 6.4 68. 74.6 71.9 66 7 63 1 .72in 1335in 2.33in .72in. .78in .81in .62in ture (Fahr- 54.4° 51.6° 51.7° 48.3° 40.1° 48. 33.4° 41.1° 33.6 43.6° 39.9° 41.9 41.° 39.4° 72. 67. 72. 66. 55.° 64. 46. 151. 44. 59.° 58.° 63.° 60. 61. 37.. 31. 35. 32. 28.° 34. 18. 32. 24. 30.° 18. 18.. 27.0 23 DIRECTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH OFFICES Headquarters: S. W. Corner Centre and Walker Streets, Borough of Manhattan Borough of The Bronx, 3731 Third Avenue. Telephone, 1975 Tremont Office Hours-9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 12 m. HOSPITALS FOR CONTAGIOUS DISEASES Manhattan-Willard Parker Hospital, foot of East 16th Street. Telephone, 1600 Stuyvesant. Brooklyn-Kingston Avenue Hospital, Kingston Avenue and Fenimore Street. Telephone, 4400 Flatbush. LABORATORIES Diagnosis Laboratory, Centre and Walker Streets. Telephone, 6280 Franklin. Research Laboratory. Chemical Laboratory. Vaccine Laboratory. Drug Laboratory. CLINICS FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN Manhattan-Gouverneur Slip. Telephone, 2916 Orchard. 1249 Herkimer Street. Telephone, 2684 East New York. The Bronx-580 East 169th Street. Telephone, 2558 Tremont. TUBERCULOSIS CLINICS Manhattan-West Side Clinic, 307 West 33d Street. Telephone, 3471 Murray Hill. Telephone, 2957 Lenox. The Bronx-Northern Clinic, St. Pauls Place and Third Avenue. Telephone, 1975 Tremont. Brooklyn-Main Clinic, Fleet and Willoughby Streets. Telephone, 4720 Main. Germantown Clinic, 55 Sumner Avenue. Telephone, 3228 Williamsburg. Eastern District Clinic, 306 South 5th Street, Williamsburg. Telephone, 1293 Williamsburg. Queens-Jamaica Clinic, 10 Union Avenue, Jamaica. Telephone, 1386 Jamaica. Richmond-Richmond Clinic, Bay and Elizabeth Streets, Stapleton. Telephone, 440 Tompkins. SANATORIUM FOR TUBERCULOSIS Otisville, Orange County, N. Y. (via Erie Railroad from Jersey City). Telephone, 13 Otisville. TUBERCULOSIS HOSPITAL ADMISSION BUREAU Maintained by the Department of Health, the Department of Public Charities, and Bellevue and Allied Hospitals, 426 First Avenue. Telephone, 8667 Madison Square. Hours 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. M. 8. BROWN PRINTING & BINDING CO. 49 TO 57 PARK PLACE, NEW YORK 522-B-18 (B) 2000 DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH Report for Week Ending February 8, 1913 DEFECTIVE VISION IN PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILDREN. From 1909 to 1912, inclusive, 1,015,219 physical examinations of school children have been made by Medical Inspectors of the Division of Child Hygiene of the Department of Health. In 105,797 instances defective vision was found to exist in some degree. The regular procedure of the Department has been to call the attention of the parents of these affected children to the existence of the physical defect and to urge the parents to take the child to the family physician for treatment. If no response to this request is received within a few days, a nurse of the Department of Health visits the parents to explain and urge the necessity of treatment, and thereafter repeats her call as many times as may be necessary to see that treatment is obtained or until the parents definitely refuse to provide any medical care for the child. Cases of extreme neglect to provide glasses where they are absolutely needed are referred to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Absolute refusal on account of indifference or neglect is rarely encountered; more often refusal is based upon financial reasons. In such cases the various relief and social agencies of the City provide the needed glasses for the child, if, upon investigation, it is found that the family cannot afford to pay for them. By means of these efforts 65,940, or 62.3 per cent., of these children have obtained the treatment necessary. Recently an investigation of the defective vision of school children has been made by a physician of this City. This physician examined forty children who were considered mentally defective or rated as delinquent or backward in their studies. Twenty-nine of the cases were followed up, and, after the fitting of glasses to these children, they were found by him to be improved mentally. The control covered a period of six months. From these results he has drawn the conclusion that the children of the public schools are not under competent medical supervision. It may be incidentally remarked that these children were taken to the physician's office to have their vision tested and that the eyeglasses furnished these children were also obtained from him. The Department of Health considers it an unwarranted interference with the rights of the medical profession and of parents to refer children with physical defects to any special physician or dealer in medical or surgical supplies for the purpose of physical examination, treatment or the obtaining of such appliances as may be necessary to correct their defects. It believes that the parents have an absolute right to take their children to their own physicians or to dispensaries selected by themselves. The improvement in scholastic progress of backward children in whom defective vision has been corrected is obvious. Studies and investigations made by the Department do not warrant the conclusion that the provision of eyeglasses causes any definite improvement in the mentality of children who are actually mentally defective. In the public schools these mentally defective children are wholly under the control of the Department of Education. They are examined by a special physician of that Department before they are assigned to the special ungraded classes. It is a debatable question whether or not such children should be in_the_public schools or be committed to special institutions for the mentally defective, but, in either event, alienists have not corroborated the claim that the correction of defects of vision occurring in these unfortunate children acts as a panacea. It is of interest to note here that in 1909 Dr. Leonard P. Ayres, Assistant Director of the Division of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation, conducted a careful study of 7,608 children in the public schools to determine the degree of retardation caused by the various physical defects. He found as a result of his investigation that physical defects as a whole caused a retardation that was equal to an additional year in the complete eight-year course. The only defect he found that did not affect retardation in any way was that of vision. The children with this defect finished their course in eight years, with no loss of progress. There is a middle point of view between the extremes of these two investigations. The Department of Health for many years has had supervision of the medical inspection and examination of the children in New York City's public schools. Its system of school inspection is broader in its scope, and equally, if not more, efficient in its results, than that maintained by any other large city in the country. That the correction of physical defects in school_children helps them to progress in their studies has been amply demonstrated. From time to time specialists in some one branch of medicine make investigations to determine the effect on school progress of the correction of the specified defect. There is decided danger that overconcentration in any specialized line may give rise to the assumption that the defect in question is the only one of supreme importance. From its extended experience with the subject, the Department of Health is convinced, not only that the correction of defects of vision is a necessity, but that the reduction and correction of the other physical defects in children are of equal importance. It is a hasty and ill-balanced conclusion to infer that anything less than proper attention to all of the physical defects and deficiencies of the children, with the needed adjustment of home and school conditions, as well as proper medical attention, will give that mental and physical health which is essential to well-rounded child life. The necessity of care and adjustment of the many features which may have an effect upon the health of the child during the nineteen hours of the day when it is not in school are fundamentally of just as great, and, in many instances, of far greater, importance than those conditions which affect it during the five hours it is in school. The health of the 700,000 children in New York City's public schools should not be judged by the results of any special group of twenty-nine children. Racial, social and economic conditions all must be studied and adjusted as they pertain to the life of the child, both in the school and at home. Proper medical treatment must be provided for the correction of physical defects, and the individual idiosyncrasies of the child studied, in order that individual treatment and care may be assured in each case. These facts are the fundamental ones upon which the present system of medical examination of school children in New York City is founded. Its greatest efficacy in assuring to the child that normal health to which it is clearly entitled will come when school officials, the medical profession and the laity bring forth their fullest measure of co-operation with the efforts which the Department of Health is making in this line. METHYL, OR WOOD ALCOHOL. It has been abundantly proven that methyl alcohol is intensely poisonous to human beings, either when swallowed or when its vapor is inhaled. Whether toxic symptoms can also be produced by its external application is somewhat doubtful, for the reports of such cases do not conclusively eliminate inhalation. The properties of crude methyl alcohol are sufficiently well known to most people. Its odor is well marked and intensely disagreeable and its legitimate use in the trades is practically restricted to the solution of certain gums and resins. In the household it is sometimes employed in lamps in its crude form as a substitute for the more expensive ethyl or grain alcohol. Crude methyl alcohol contains many substances other than the hydroxide of methyl, most important among which, in so far as toxicity is concerned, are acetone and cyanides. It is possible by rectification, long continued, complicated and expensive, to extract these associated products completely, and the fluid which is then left is colorless and has an odor which cannot be distinguished from that of ethyl alcohol. While the literature is slightly conflicting, it seems pretty well established that chemically pure methyl alcohol exerts no more toxic influence upon the animal economy than does ethyl alcohol. The trouble is that, as sold under various trade names, methyl alcohol is only partially rectified. and, while its taste and smell under these circumstances are practically identical with those of ethyl alcohol, the poisonous cyanides and acetone remain in sufficient quantities to cause serious symptoms, and even death, when taken internally. A great many cases of poisoning have thus resulted in this city during the past several years. Most frequently the methyl alcohol has been drunk in the form of an adulterant of cheap spirits. The symptoms in these cases are acute. The person becomes unconscious, with widely dilated pupils, and death frequently results without return to consciousness. The poison seems to exert a specific influence upon the optic nerves or more especially, as has been shown, upon the ganglionic nerve cells of the retina, rapidly causing their death, which is followed by an ascending atrophy of the nerve, sometimes preceded by a slight neuritis. The atrophy, in severe cases, involves the entire nerve, and, as a result, complete and incurable |