SCHOOL HYGIENE: THE SCHOOLROOM.

BY R. M. WIGGINTON, M. D., OF WAUKESHA.

A healthy schoolroom presupposes a healthy schoolhouse; we cannot have the one without the other.

In order to have an ideal schoolhouse it will be necessary to consider many factors, chief of which is location. The ideal site cannot be found with equal facility in city and country. The location should be elevated, so as to secure good drainage. The grounds should slope in all directions. There should be a dry soil, with a gravel subsoil. If possible the building should front the southeast. There should be sufficient shade, and the trees should be well trimmed up, allowing a free passage of air through the grounds.

If possible the building and grounds should be protected by a forest, from the north and west, or some other healthy protection, as higher hills or elevations. These protections should not be too near the site. All the surroundings should be healthful, and pleasing to the eye. In regard to the building, it should be a work of common sense, up-to-date art. There should be ample distance between it and the street or road, thereby cutting off all extraneous or disagreeable sounds, which always interfere with close attention to studies. The interior of the building, generally, should be finished in soft subdued tints, in dead colors, thereby giving no violent contrasts and no reflections. All schoolrooms should be so built and planned that when the scholars are in their seats the light shall come from behind, and diagonally from behind over the shoulders. No slates or glazed writing material should be used, and no reflecting surfaces of any kind allowed in the room.

There should never be more than thirty scholars at one time in the room during study hours; and no one teacher should be

allowed a larger number. A room seating this number should not contain much less than 700 square feet of floor surface; and it should be at least fifteen feet high. The light should be ample but subdued. All seats should be arranged singly, the backs not too sloping, and all sharp angles and corners nicely rounded off. Great care should be exercised in grading the seats in accordance with the age and size of the pupil.

The properly shaped room of a graded school would be about 21 x 32 feet, inside measurement. In the above sized room the aisles should be two feet wide, and the side space five feet, giving ample room for working at blackboard and maps. The upper end of the room should have a space 8 x 32 feet for teacher, desk and blackboard exercises. Next to the schoolroom should be planned two ample narrow rooms or halls in which each sex can tidily hang its outer clothing. These little rooms should be well ventilated and properly lighted.

The heating of schoolrooms is a problem not yet solved. So far the Ruttan system seems to have given the best satisfaction. With the exception of super-heated air and a slight defect in ventilation, the system is a very good one. The ideal heating apparatus, however, would be the hot water system. The heating should be indirect and the general principles of the Ruttan system carried out, with the addition of ventilation at the top of the rooms, to be used only during hot and muggy weather, or at any season of the year when the upper strata of air become overheated. The downward ventilation should always pass directly under the floors, giving additional warmth, and making the system more economical. The Ruttan closet system is about all that could be wished for.

Imperfect ventilation, superheated air and the noxious emanations from filthy bodies and dirty clothing, produce more lassitude, headache and sickness in the schoolroom ntha

all other causes combined. The best temperature for a schoolroom would be about 68° Fahrenheit.

A higher degree than this produces languor, and is enervating, rendering children more liable to "catch cold" on entering the playgrounds or elsewhere. In fact any dwelling house where healthy people reside, should not be kept, for health, at a higher temperature than 66°. One great fault with the American people is the very objectionable one of keeping their dwellings too warm. Imperfect ventilation and overheated. rooms are two of the most prolific causes of that prevalent American disease, catarrh of the head, throat and nasal passages.

All schoolrooms should be carefully mopped and seats wiped with a disinfectant every evening after school hours; and every Saturday the entire floor surface and bannisters should be wiped up, and mopped with hot water containing a good disinfectant, during the entire session. No sweeping or so

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called dusting should be allowed in a school-room. expended for these purposes will pay an hundred fold. There should be a morning and afternoon intermission of the entire school, even if many do not go out into the open air. It gives a mental and bodily rest, and restores vigor and concentration of thought.

Small children should not be kept in the schoolroom more than four hours each day.

No child who has not reached the age of six years should be allowed to attend public school, and may not even then. The family physician should be consulted in this matter, and not allow so important a matter to rest solely on the judgment of the parents or guardian. In all graded or high schools a competent janitor should be employed. No scholar should be allowed to remain in the schoolroom unless perfectly tidy, clean and wholesome. The teacher or principal should be given authority to correct this matter by sending the pupil home for renovation. This matter of filthiness on

the part of pupils is often a great source of contamination of the atmosphere of the schoolroom, and a breeder of disease. All scholars with any suspicion of sore throat or cough should be immediately sent home for inspection by the family physician, and not readmitted without the proper certificate. Teachers should also be on the alert to discover any imperfection of eyesight. The simple fact of repeated headache should arouse suspicion. All scholars should be properly

vaccinated. In convenient places spittoons well filled with a fluid disinfectant should be kept. A child should be taught never to defile the floor of his schoolroom with spittle. The schoolroom should be pure and undefiled. No known consumptive, pupil or teacher, should be allowed in the schoolroom, or any one having a discharge, sore or eruption. Many scholars can stand more study and indoor work than others. This fact should be well considered by teachers and school boards.

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The younger children should be given easier tasks and less hours of study. The very best men and women should be chosen to make up our school boards. The utmost care should be exercised in the selection of teachers, and a greater liberality shown by the public in their remuneration. every graduate of a high school is competent, or should be hired (which is too often done to the detriment of the school) to teach in her own district. The very best teachers should be hired, irrespective of political or friendly bias.

The hygiene of all schools, whether district, village, city, private or parochial, should be under the direct charge of the several boards of health, and at the head of each board should be placed a competent physician, well versed in health matters. I enclose the floor plans of a department in a graded. school, also one of the so-called district school. And last, if it will add to the health of the school, I would place on the highest pinnacle of this temple of learning the flag of our country.

HEATING AND VENTILATING SCHOOLROOMS.

BY D. C. BEEBE, M. D., OF SPARTA.

In view of the necessary brevity of this paper, and in view of the fact that this subject is so thoroughly covered by other papers at this meeting, it is necessary that several fundamental propositions be accepted in the outset without discussion.

The best way to warm and ventilate schoolrooms under all surroundings and conditions is yet an open question. The average schoolroom is poorly warmed and worse ventilated. Proper warmth and good air are very important schoolroom conditions, and tell largely-as they are good or bad-in the preparation of our children for the activities of life.

By a properly warmed schoolroom we mean a room that is evenly warmed from floor to ceiling, and the temperature maintained at about 70° Fahr. By a properly ventilated room we mean a room where the air is maintained at a degree of purity consistent with comfort and health. The air we breathe, in nature, so to speak, is not absolutely pure, but is sufficiently so to sustain life and health. Air not confined, as in the fields, free upon the prairies and elsewhere, contains from three to five parts of carbon-dioxide to 10,000 parts of pure air. Air confined in close rooms where many people are congregated soon becomes vitiated by respiration, body exhalations, soiled and damp clothing, to the extent that the impurities represented are equivalent to ten, fifteen, and, in some instances, to over fifty parts of carbon-dioxide to 10,000 parts of pure air.

Impurities in the air we breathe, representing about six or eight parts of carbon-dioxide to 10,000 parts of pure air, render it unfit for use, and if in a schoolroom, children will show symptoms of intoxication.