WOOLLEN WEAR

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4800, 21 June 1939, Page 6

WOOLLEN WEAR

HEALTH PROPERTIES. HEALTH EXPERIMENTS WITH CHILDREN. The results of a remarkable series of observations, extending over two years, as to the influence of woollen underwear on the health of school children in Paris, have been conveyed to the Society of Comparative Pathology of France, reports the International Wool Secretariat.

Flannel undergarments were issued to a proportion of children in different age groups at 12 selected kindergartens in the poorer districts of Paris and in certain rural schools for older children. The ages of the children in these experiments ranged from two to six years at the kindergartens and from six to 14 at the rural schools. The children selected for the experiment were in general the more weakly and debilitated in the several groups. The remaining children who did not receive wool undergarments served as controls for the experiment. The effects of the wearing of wool (flannel) was determined primarily by comparing the average number of days’ absence from school in the two groups. The results which are given for individual schools and then summarised as a whole are as follows :

Total number of children in the experiments 938 Children with wool underwear

average days absent from school) 8.98 Children without wool undcr-

wear (average days absent school) 21.58

The health properties of wool, so remarkably demonstrated by the recent experiments in France, are being closely investigated in England under the auspices of the International Wool Secretariat, at the London School of Hygiene.