TOWELS AND DISEASE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4707, 1 May 1894, Page 3

TOWELS AND DISEASE.

For all that lias been said about over-pressure in schools, it has been thought by many that the present >ystem of elementary education was more likely to receive a check from its liability to produce ringworms on tho outside of the children's heads than from any harm tho teiching does to the parts within. Be that as it may there is no doubt the liability of schools to be intruded upon by infections diseases is a greai difficulty in th« way of national education, Kingworm, we oil know about; the recent spread of diphtheria is looked on by many, who have given anxious

thought to the matter, as having mote to do with compulsory eduoatioD than with any other single cause, and now we And Mr Hutchinson insisting, at the lest moment of the Opbthalmological Society, that school ophthalmia has broken bounds and Bpread from the pauper schools to those of a higher urade. Outsidoand beyond the probftoility that deficient air and food, and exercise, are predisposing causes, tho lesson taught by recent outbreaks of ibis disease is that it is definitely contagious, and we can have but little doubt that community of towels is at : the bottom of its occurrence in many instances. Considering the great laxity with which ordinary childron re-

gard meum and Imm in the lavatory, we would strongly urgo parents to make their children clean before they start in the morning, and definitely forbid them to wash at sohool.— British Medical Journal.