Child hygiene / by S. Josephine Baker.

  • Sara Josephine Baker
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Child hygiene / by S. Josephine Baker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to do much to prevent disease or to care satisfactorily for those who were ill in the face of bad living conditions, in¬ sufficient food, wrong feeding, and all of the factors which may be summed up in the two words—ignorance and poverty. They, too, felt the need of health teaching, of improvement in sanitation and hygiene, and it was natural, therefore, that Miss Wald should have been the one to suggest the employment of the first public-health nurse in this country. This nurse, who was Miss Lina Rogers, volunteered to aid the Department of Health of New York City in its work of school medical inspection. This occurred in 1902. At that time the Board of Health of New York determined to clean up the schools as far as occurrence of infectious eye and skin diseases was concerned. Doctors were sent into the classrooms to make diagnoses and to exclude from school attendance all children who were found to be suffering from any infectious disease. Trachoma, scabies, ringworm, and pediculosis were encountered so commonly that in some parts of the city practically the entire school population was sent home. The parents felt that the diseases were so insignificant that they refused to take the children to a doctor and let them play on the street untreated. Truant officers ordered the children back to school, only to be met by the Health Department inspectors, who said that the children must stay away until cured. Miss Wald’s idea was that possibly these children might be treated in school by a nurse, and if kept under the nurse’s observa¬ tion might be allowed to remain in school without danger of infecting others. Definite types of treatment were adopted, which will be referred to in the chapter on School Medical Inspection. We may only say here that the plan was a complete success and that this type of work has resulted, where it has been followed, in practically eliminat¬ ing all contagious eye and skin diseases occurring in school children. Our interest now lies in the fact that the first public-health nurse to be employed under governmental con¬ trol had as the inspiration of her employment the prevention
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