[Report 1915] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cheshire County Council.

  • Cheshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1915
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1915] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cheshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Tlio highest percentage of defects occurred in what is known as the 5 gruup i.e. the children wiio, roughly speaking, possess only two-thirds of normal vision. The number of children with very bad vision i.e. or q was not large, viz, 98 in tho first-named group (0.8 per cent, of tho.sc examined) and 7( in the last-named group (O.G per cent, of those examined). Still for such children it would be very desirable to special classes. As this is not practicable at present, I would suggest that such children should be taught only by means of charts and blackboards at close range, with oral lessons and course manual work and that no book-work at all should be given. External Eye Diseases. Of these the most serious is what is known as corneal opacity, i.e., more or less opaque deposit in the front w'all of the eyeball usually interfering with vision in one direction or another. There were 35 cases of this condition di.scovcred. Of the other conditions blepharitis or inflammation of the edges of the eyelids (sometimes contagious) was found in 150 children. Enlargement of the Thyroid Ciland. Dr. Margaret Ormiston rep'orts on this subject as follows: “This disease which wo arc told in text-books is found in Derbyshire, Devonshire, Switzerland, Italy and the Tyrol w'ould appear to be found also in Chesliiro, and especially in the rural districts of the Nantwich Union and in the Middlc- wich area. In many cases investigation has proved that several mem- bers of a family are affected and, so far ns one lias been able to come to any conclusion regarding the transmission of the diathesis, the majority of cases have been roi')orted among the maternal relations of the children.” Treatment of Defects. There were in all 9,542 instances in which treatment for one or other defect was considered necessary, 1,5G9 cases out of this number being carried forward from tlie previous year, and the balance, 7,973 cases, being new ones. Tlie number of cases for which no report is available is again much larger than I care to see. Of these 313 are old- standing cases of defective teeth: out of the total of 3,<14