[Report 1934] / School Medical Officer of Health, Essex County Council.

  • Essex County Council
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1934] / School Medical Officer of Health, Essex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/56 (page 35)
    iTood. Tlic most striking figures are those dealing with the catarrhal conditions, and sliow the importance of a healthy naso-pharynx as a pro- ])hylactic measure against colds. Whatever may be the statistical shortcomings of this study, it seems only right to record that 85 ]ier cent, of ])arcnts of these cases considered their children definitely improved in health by the operation. (b) Chronic Middle Ear Disease in School Children. (i) Incidence of Disease—Statistical Discrepancies. Crowden, in a paper read before the Section of Medical Sociology of the British Medical Association, discussed deafness as a national problem. Some of his findings are of peculiar intere.st to workers in the School Medical Service, and are reproduced here. In 1928, of 53,075 applicants for Army service, 2,568 were rejected on account of diseases of the middle ear and deafness. In 1932, of 54,159 applicants, 2,993 were rejected for the same reason. Incidentally, this group comprised the chief single medical cause for rejection. It is clear, therefore, that 5 per cent.—6 per cent, of young men drawn from the same social stratum as children attending elementary schools, show evidence of disease of the auditory mechanism. In the annual report for 1928 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education, the incidence of middle ear disease among elementary school children is returned at 0.54 per cent. The marked disparity between these two series of statistics suggests either there is a great increase in the incidence of middle ear infections in the years immediately after school leaving, or that minor degrees of auditory disease are passing undetected at the routine school medical examinations. That the latter is the case is shown by the v/ork carried out at the Tottenham, Hornsey and some London County Council Schools. The School Medical Services in these places, by using an accurate and standardised method of testing hearing, the gramophone audiometer, found that the incidence of defective hearing and middle ear disease was as high as in the applicants for Army service. (ii) Incidence of Disease in Dagenham School Children. A survey, commenced in April, 1934, before the publication of Crowden’s figures, was planned to estimate the incidence of chronic otitis media in elementary school children, and to discover what had been the response to treatment. For this purpose, all parents attending routine school medical inspections were questioned regarding ear discharges in their children, and an examination with an electric otoscope was made on each child.