Newspapers / Shelby Daily Star (Shelby, … / Sept. 12, 1934, edition 1 / Page 2
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How Science Safeguards the Trek Bacl< to School 3 UI E W 3 e i ui n m »*« 3 ***** Checking Up the Millions of Pupils to Cure and Prevent SHORTLY after Labor Day of each year millions of American school children begin their annual trek back to their schools which have been silenced throughout the Summer. It is a vast army that is on the march throughout the length and breadth of the land, some 22 millions of boys and girls between the ages of five and 20 years. In the rear ranks of this great army are about two millions of children who are under seven years of age, rep resenting nearly 40 per cent of that age and class in all the United States. It is this important division, as Gaylord W. Graves points out in the health magazine, Hygeia, which comprises be ginners and first graders, supposedly unspoiled and expected to atone or com pensate for all the defects and mistakes of their elder brothers and sisters, if not for the sins of their parents. ) Among these children who are in the kindergarten and first grade arehundreds of thousands who are the victims of va rious ills, due often to neglect. Some may have enlarged neck glands and recurring discharges from the ears as a “result of scarlet fever. Others are short of breath and are subject to “growing pains.” The mouths of others are filled with neglected and disinte grating teeth, while still others are cross-eyed, bow-legged or flat-footed. “There is probably no more neglected age in childhood,” says Mr. Graves, “than the preschool period. Infancy is safeguarded because of its unique help lessness, and the older child when ill speaks most effectively for himself. The child entering school for the first time is going into a new realm. For a time he will he ‘all up in the air’ so to speak. His take-off, like that of the aviator, calls for a carefully checked-up motor, the best possible fuel supply and lasting safeguards. “The child of the runabout age, how ever, has unexplained fevers, runs through measles and whooping cough the Many Maladies. with little if any at tention directed to his convalescence, wan ders from a rational diet and sets his own bedtime by that of his older brother or sister without being compelled to fulfil any greater expecta tion of his parents than that he shall travel on his reputation for medieal economy, his ability to keep on his feet being the determinate and unquestioned criterion of his welfare. Thus, beyond all question, when the 6-ycar-old child starts for school he is due for a real check-up, not an ordinary legalised school inspection, valuable m this may be, but a more detailed examination by a medical observer of experience, under condition^ permitting without annoy ance the removal of the child’s entire clothing. • "Estimates of malnutrition are not ' wholly dependent on standard tables of : height, and weight figures. Dental de fects call for diet adjustment as well as 1 for the extraction or tilling of teeth. “ The posture problem is often an indi ’ vidual problem. Tonsil disease is not • always recognisable by the eye alone. • Kidney impairment may exist unsus ■ pected. Chorea, or St. Vitus' dance, l even when mild may be accompanied by heart inflammation. Concealed tubercu losis of lymph glands may be the unsus • pected causative factor underlying fa i tigue that has wrongly been considered The Sea as a Source of Salt r-r Making Salt in China Where Primitive Windmills Are Used to Pump Sea Water Into Ponds and Evaporated by the Heat of the Sun, Leaving Salt as the Residue. SALT is mostly derived from sea water, evaporated by the sun in great shallow tanks. In former times nearly all the salt of commerce was obtained by this method. There is a quarter of a pound of salt in every gallon of sea water and, according to an authoritative estimate, the ocean con tains four and a half million cubic miles of salt, or fourteen and a half times the bulk of the entire continent of Europe above high-water mark. Salt-making by solar evaporation was practised extensively in New England long after the Revolution, and until the product thus derived from the sea was driven out of the market by cheaper salt from salt springs in the State of New York. Even at the present time it is pro duced by this method a large scale in California, where sea water is ad mitted to shallow ponu when the tides are highest each month, usually at the period of the new moon. The ponds have gates which automat ically open when the water runs in, and close when the tide ebbs. The water is n r lifted by arehimedean screws operated by windmills or gasoline engines, and then allowed to pass by gravity through a series of pools, becoming more and more concentrated until it forms salt crystal#. Will Alcohol Take the Place of Soap? ALCOHOL may take the place of soap if a new German process now twins commercialized in America is as successful «s the pro moters hope. The higher alcohols are prepared by the hydroeenltation of fatty acids, ac complished by suspending a finely divid ed nickel catalyse in the hot oil and passing hydrogen through it, under pressure. The atcohols so produced are sulphonated by treating with aulphuric acid, the finished product being in the form of the sodium salt. The sulphuric esters of the higher fatty alcohols have all the advantages of soaps and apparently none of their * . aIA 1 I An Eye-Sight Te*t in Which the Three Legged Block, Corre rnding in Shape to Figures on a Chart, Is Held a Short Distance from the Child Who Is Asked to Tell Which Way the Legs Point. only natural by a great many parents.” According to figures of the New York State health department, cited by Dr. Josephine Baker and by Dr. H. D. Chapin, of the entire 22 million school children in the United States, one per cent are mentally defective; more than one percent have heart disease: five per cent have or have had tuberculosis (an estimate far too low to include all de Left: Exam ining the Throat of a School Child in a Test to Remedy De fect* • f Speech and t o Discover Any Inflamed I Condi tions , Dne to Duty Air. : Right! Ascer taining the Weight of a School Child Which 1* Re garded as a Sure Index to the State of Health. grees of healed tuberculosis); 25 per cent have defective eyes; 20 per cent are under-nourished; about the same num ber have enlarged adenoids, tonsillar disease or glandular disease; from 10 to 20 par cent have orthopedic or joint defects; and from 60 to 76 per cent have defective teeth. Dr. Sobel of the New York board of health has defined the status of the pre school child in these words: “The Bureau of Child Hygiene has always felt that the best time to take care of the child’s health is before he enters school and that preventive and remedial measures undertaken at this How Sunshine Is Recorded A NEWLY invented con trivance for recording sunshine not only regis ters the intensity of sunshine but its duration during the day. A glass hall serves the pur pose of a lens, concentrating the solar rays upon a strip of paper placed in a convex Holder be neath. The ball acts as a burn ing glass, the point of its focus moving along the strip as the sun travels across the heavens. • When the sun shines all day long, a mark which is a con tinuous line is burned on the strip. When clouds obscure the sun, the burned line is interrupted. Measurementof the burned mark shows the dura tion of sunshine for that day, and the hour and min ute periods of sunshine. The G 1 a • • . Ball Concen trates the So lar Rays on Movable Strip of Pa per Into, Which Is j Burned a I Line to Reg- J later Sun-i shine. time would do much toward the elimina tion or diminution of physical defects, and place, him in a sound physical condition up on school entrance.... Any material reduc tion in the percentage of physical defects found in school chil dren and a betterment of their general well being must come through the care of the children before their entrance into school.” Dr. Chapin, noting that there are about half a million children of preschool age in New York City, has stated that “all of these should be exam ined twice a year in order to recognize any condition or defect that can usually be corrected at the start." The business of being a school child today is wholly different from what it used to be. For one thing, it is much less hazardous. For another, the child’s expectation of health and good physique in later life is greatly enhanced. The modern child is scientifically handled and scientifically fed, from birth onward. Consider the important matter of eye sight. Fifty years ago, if a child was nearsighted, the fact gained little or no attention. Children were practically never seen wearing glasses, though they might need them. Nowadays it is real ized that nearsight may be due to a dis ease (its cause not even yet understood) which changes the shape of the eyeball, making it oval instead of spherical as it ought to be. There are of course many other eye troubles which, when they manifest themselves in children, de mand prompt attention by the oculist. In well-managed schools today, as much attention is given to the physical welfare of the children as to their men tal training. Not only their vision but their hearing also 'is tested by qualified experts. When defects of hearing or of eye sight are found, means are taken to remedy the trouble if possible, or to prevent it from getting worse as the years go on. Special attention is bestowed upon the teeth. If the temporary teeth are not kept in good order, the permanent ones that replace them will not be sound. This is a fact not at all generally un derstood. The school child of today is a scien tific product. Certain foods are added to the diet at prescribed ages. In selec tion of these foods, regard is had for their content of vitamin A, vitamin B, and others, which have relation to the infant’s body needs for health and growth. Much less than fifty years ago such ideas had no place, not only in the minds of parents, but not even in the minds of physicians. The Hillside House That Has Its Garage in the Garret A MODERN home of five rooms picturesquely perched on the side of a steep California hill presents an anomaly in architecture. The garage is in the garret! The site of this house was chosen by the owner because of the unsurpassed view it afforded of the Bay of San Fran cisco. It is surrounded by redwood trees and borders on the water that overlooks the famous Golden Gate. Since this house was built with its front toward the bay, for the sake of the magnificent view afforded, and its back to the road, the steepness of the hill brought the top of the structure on a level with the road that passes in the rear. Thus the lay of the land offered a solution of the problem of where to build the garage. The attic made the disadvantages. Thus, both the wetting out power and the emulsifying ability of the new compounds are greater than :hose of soa,->, giving them much better detergent value,according to D.H.Kille ■ >r, writing in Industrial and Engineer 'ng Chemistry. The sodium salts are soluble in acid, neutral, and alkaline media without decomposition into insol uble compounds. The calcium and mag nesium salts are soluble in water and the presence of dissolved salts in the washing bath does not serious affect the detergent power of the solution. Thus washing in hard or salt water, in acid or alkaline dye baths involves no loss of material or labor. The sulphuric acid esters do not turn rancid. ideal location, as the pro nounced slope of the hillside rendered it practically unfeasible to construct a separate ga rage else where on the lot. Steps end ing at the side of the road lead down to the entrance of the house, which is one story beneath the garage. From the basement to the garage the house is four stories high. A Five-Room (louse Built on a Steep Hillside S o That the At tic Is on a Level with the Road and Becomes the Garage. Copyright, 1111. Klas FMturw ByndloaU. lac IF a census of the world’s sufferers of hay fever were taken, it would reveal that only in a minority of cases do persons who have brown or very dark pigmentation of the iris (sur rounding the pupil of the eyes) suffer from true hay fever. This statement is in accordance with the discovery re cently announced by Mr. Harry Pickup, who nas made extensive researches to find a means of providing definite relief and immunity from this malady. This .investigator explains that during the “'spring and summer certain stellar or cosmic radiations reach the earth that are absent during the winter. These rays, beyond the ultra-violet range are • responsible for the rise in sap in plant life, and towards midsummer they be come extremely penetrative and under certain circumstances irritant, and in places even lethal to plant and animal life. In races naturally subject to intense sunrays (Negro, Arab, Hindoo), nature has provided, through bodily glands, a natural protective substance termed “melanin, the outward and visible sign of which is the dark color of the skin and brown pigmentation of the iris sur rounding the pupil of the eye. Destructive and toxic solar rays, ac cording to Mr. Pickup, cannot penetrate through the skin impregnated with mel anin, or irritate the protected optic nerves through the deeply colored iris. Saxon races with fair, sensitive skin and light pigmentation of the iris (blue or gray) are not freely bestowed with melanin content in the blood. The only slight in dication of its existence in their case is freckling. The brunette is more amply supplied with this substance, hence the normally darker and protective coloring of the skin and iris, and dark bronzing effect of sunburn, while the blonde goes red with skin blistering, and headache, through sunray irritation of the optic nerve. The effect of this, together with the interplay between the optical and lach rymal nerves is explained in a way which shows that in a very large num ber of cases the conditions arising are the sole provocative cause of hay fever, quite apart from other supplementary factors irritated into action by seasonal and other influences. Making a Chemical Flower Garden CHEMICAL flower gardens, which make very odd decorations for the home, can be grown by pre paring the following mixture: Six tablespoonfuls of salt. Six tablespoonfuls of bluing. Six tablespoonfuls of water. One tablespoonful of ammonia water. These four ingredients are first thor oughly mixed and then poured over a piece of coal or coke which has been placed in a broad and shallow glass dish. In case the coal or coke is not readily at hand pieces of a brick can be substituted. After the pieces of coal, coke or brick have become thoroughly saturated with the chemical mixture, pour on them a few drops of red, blue and green ink to give the chemical flowers their colors. These chemical flowers are formed as the result of a capillary phenomenon in volving the tendency of ammonium salts to “creep.” The saturated solution de posits crystals around its edges and upon the clinker where the evaporation is greatest. The crystals are porous and act like a wick, sucking up more of the solution by capillary action. A coral-like growth soon begins to spread over the pieces of coal, coke or brick and grows very rapidly. The edges of the dish containing the chem ical flowers should be rubbea with vase line to prevent the garden from grow ing beyond its bed.
Shelby Daily Star (Shelby, N.C.)
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Sept. 12, 1934, edition 1
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