Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/201

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THE SCHOOL DOCTOR IN OTHER LANDS
175

ing past all the time. "In a few years," her senior school doctor cries to us gaily, "we shall, so far at least as physical conditions are concerned, have no lower classes."

That is a very cheering thing to hear. And the best of it is that it appears to be true. America is the country where huge fortunes are quickly make, and quickly lost. Its citizens have something of the ardour of the South, and also something of the sense of impermanency in all things, that distinguishes the far East. So they make haste to grow rich, and being rich do not as a rule hug their gold tightly. Rich men are found in numbers who will endow costly institutions and schools, and pay for new public experiments. So money was no bar, once the idea had occurred to the city fathers to make the young citizens clean and healthy. In 1897 New York actually engaged a hundred and fifty doctors, each of whom would have the care of only three to five schools. A corps of nurses was also engaged, and a health squad formed in the police force to go round and visit homes where there were infectious cases. Such measures as these do not re-create a race, or make everyone healthy. But they certainly are designed to give a rude set-back to infectious diseases and to lift the incubus that results from