from the danger of contagion from washbowls, dirty towels, and closet seats, the moral effect is quite as bad.

Every toilet room in all schools should have an attendant on duty from the time the building is opened in the morning until the last pupil has gone in the afternoon. It is impossible for teachers or janitors to oversee the toilet rooms.

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H

FIG. 26. Position assumed in writing with the desk too high.

Sweeping and Dusting. Schoolrooms and corridors should be swept daily with damp sawdust, and all desks, seats, tables, and window ledges be wiped with damp cloth dusters. Dry sweeping and dusting should be forbidden. Toilet rooms should be scrubbed daily.

Seats and Desks. Improperly constructed seats and desks by compelling a child to assume a cramped or strained position produce curvature of the spine.

Schoolrooms should not be provided with fixed seats and desks of uniform size according to the grade. In this respect the country schoolroom has the advantage over many town and city schools, as the seats are usually of three or four sizes and children are placed according to their size and not their grade.

Lincoln makes the following suggestions regarding seats and desks:

FIG. 27. Position assumed in writing with the desk too low.

"1. The chair is often too high for young scholars. The most convenient plan may be to provide footstools. 2. The seat from back to front ought to be long enough to support the whole thigh. A more or less spoon-shaped hollow in the seat is commonly thought desirable. The curve of many settees is such as to produce pain at the point where the tuberosities of the ischium rest on the

wood; the support is there not wide enough. 3. Seats must have backs. The straight, upright back reaching to the shoulders is bad; a straight back, slightly tilted, is not bad. American seats are commonly curved, with curved backs. 4. The edge of the desk should come up to or overlap the edge of the seat. The recognition of this fact is a recent discovery. 5. Most of our best desks

FIG. 28. Desk too low.

are too high relatively to the seat, doubtless to prevent the pupil from Something is

stooping.

level of the lid. For near-sighted children the higher desk may be a necessity in writing; if the desk is made low, a portable writing stand may be placed on top of it when necessary."

Drinking-water. The dangers from drinking-water are twofold: from an impure water, and from

FIG. 30. — Correct posi- drinking-cups. Except in the

tion.

case of very small children all

school children should early be taught the dangers of a common drinking-cup. The custom of providing each child with his own cup is right theoretically, but inquiry reveals the fact that many cups go unwashed for the whole school year and may easily carry typhoid fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria germs, or worse infections.

Provision should be made for the individual drinking-cups to be washed and boiled daily, or automatic drinking-fountains should be provided.

Common Defects. - Lack of cleanliness is the most glaring and universal defect of schools, the country school being quite as bad as the school in the city.

Dust covers floors, walls, and furnishings, while water-closets and basins are unclean, and the atmosphere is tainted with the emanations from unwashed bodies, soiled clothing, defective plumbing, and coal gas.

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FIG. 31. Wolff's porcelain sanitary drinking-fountain.

The schoolroom floors in most buildings are scrubbed once a year, and were it not for the vacation interim it is doubtful if many pupils would escape serious illness.

In the older public school buildings of several large cities, many have only two or three rooms which have sunlight, while toilet rooms and cloakrooms are in the basements without a ray of daylight, and the entire buildings tainted with the foul air arising from them.

If it were possible to build schools with the same sanitary precautions that enter into modern hospitals, much disease might be prevented.

Concrete floors, and stairs with rounded angles, perfectly plain woodwork and furniture, sunlight in every room, and good plumbing would make a vast difference in the health record of schools. With concrete floors provided with drains, the floors might be washed or flooded daily and do away with the suffocating dust arising from unwashed wood floors, and chalk, which cannot fail to be a carrier of infectious materials.

In country schools lack of cleanliness is less harmful on account of the abundance of pure air and sunshine, but the cold floors, improper lighting, and absence of all toilet conveniences make them extremely uncomfortable and often unsanitary.

Luncheons. The subject of luncheons for school children is an important one to the city and country pupil; in small cities and towns the majority of children go home for their noon meal, which is a great advantage.

The luncheons of country children from comfortable homes are better, from a hygienic standpoint, than the almost universal custom of large cities, where children buy what suits their fancy from any convenient bakery or lunch room.

For fifteen years the writer daily passed a lunch room near a large public school in a well-to-do neighborhood, and feels safe in saying that fully two thirds of these children, between twelve and eighteen years of age, made their noon meal upon a cup of coffee and a piece of pie or cake, with ice-cream as a luxury.