Article October 19, 1912 Issue

A recent issue of the Inter Ocean in connection with an...

Avery Coonley

Chicago (Ill.) Inter Ocean

A recent issue of the Inter Ocean in connection with an account of the reduction of the force in the city health department, quotes Dr. Young, health commissioner of Chicago, as ridiculing the protest of the National League for Medical Freedom against the medical inspection of school children, which the board of education is undertaking to make a requirement for admission to the privileges of our "free schools." Dr. Young intimates that no treatment of ailments is involved.

We call attention, however, to the fact that the inspection is but a step toward treatment, and Dr. Young himself makes this clear, since he has consistently urged that treatment shall follow inspection as fast as this can be accomplished. He stated before the City club in December that he was trying to push the work beyond mere inspection, and in an address delivered last fall he indicated more specifically what he means by saying: "The vision, the hearing, the speech of pupils, their physical deformities, their mental defects, their nutritional status, all have come to be matters requiring attention by medical inspectors of schools and justifying correction at the expense of the community if the circumstances make it necessary. From excluding diphtheria to removing adenoids and filling defective teeth is a long road, but we have traversed it and are going farther."

The treatment will be practically compulsory, as the inspection is practically compulsory. For instance, it has just been reported to the league that where a note was sent asking that the child be excused from inspection, the inspector held the child up to puplic ridicule. Whether his brother in another room will have the hardihood to present his note remains to be seen, but if he does, he will prove his heroism. Compulsory treatment will be the next step, and those who care to preserve the right to select their own practitioner to care for their children would better act now than to wait till their child has been subjected to some such operation as Dr. Young indicates.

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