A WEAKLY NATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17032, 4 May 1923, Page 1

A WEAKLY NATION.

DOCTOR ON N.Z. CHILDREN. UNHYGIENIC SCHOOLS. (Per Press Association-.) DUNEDIN, May 4. In an address before the St John Ambulance, Dr Marshall MacDonald stated that there should be battalions of women ready to go into every home to preach the gospel of health. It was significant that though there were no intense industrial conditions here, yet New Zealand was not an A 1 nation, nor even 81. He thought that children did not live under proper hygienic conditions during the five-hour school day. Only one school in Dunedin had any properly-ventilated departments, and that was the North East Valley School, whose happy position was due to a fire that occurred four years ago. In one room 116 feet long by 22 feet wide, and by 12 feet high,, seen 167 children. The room should not have housed more than half that number, but he had been assured that there had been as many as 240 in it. Medical officers would not be successful until there was public opinion strong enough to push for proper hygiene for tubercular children. He urged that attached to every school there should be an airy, spacious room in which would be placed children with chronic coughs, tubercular tendencies, or tubercular parents. This room would be in charge of a teacher who had spent some time in a tuberculosis dispensary or university, and all classes would be taught by her or him as in the case of a country school, thus avoiding undue expense. In England this system was in operation, and children were collected in a motor vehicle and driven to school.