[Report 1927] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council.

  • Cumberland (England). County Council.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1927] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/104 (page 8)
    That this improvement is not due to a “ clean-up ” for tlie Medical Inspection, is shown by the fact that the school nurses paid 737 visits to schools (apart from Medical In¬ spections). At these visits they made 53,535 examinations, and found 805 dirty or v^erminous conditions in the children. A percentage of 1.5. {b) Minor Ailments. The total number (T minor defects noted is 77 in e.xcess of that noted the previous year, viz. : 2,248 against 2,325. (c) Tonsils and Adenoids. Troubles in the nose and throat—generally spoken of as Tonsils and Adenoids ”—and much under discussion at the present, time, are amongst the commonest conditions with which School Medical Officers have to deal. So important and close relationship have they to dis¬ turbances of general health, and so remote from the nose and throat are the. symptoms which they often give rise to, that the elfects on health jiroduced by these conditions are not always recognised even by medical men. It cannot be won¬ dered at, therefore, that the general public fail in many in¬ stances to realise lujw important a matter “ Tonsils and Adenoids” is to the health and well-being of all children. Parents, when spoken to on the subject of ‘‘ Tonsils and Adenoids,” often admit cjuite frankly that their child may have tonsils, but adenoids, no. They talk as if the two conditions were two separate and unconnected diseases, whereas they are both manifestations of one condition, and nearly always occur together, viz., an overgrowth of normal lymphoid or adenoid tissues, i.e., the tissue of which all lym])li glands throughout the body is composed, aud it must be remembered that this lymphoid tissue has a very wide distribution throughout the body. At the back of the nose aud throat are found not i)nly the tonsils, but also patches of exactly similar ti.ssue on the wall of the pharynx [i.e., the cavity forming the upper part of the gullet) with other small patches at the sides of tlie throat near the opening into the ear. Small similar patches are to be fijuiufat the base of the tongue. Similar tissue is to be found in other ])arts of the body, c.g., in ])atches throughout the intestine, and lastly, we have an enormous number of lym])hatic glands to be found iii practically every part of the body.