SCHOOL PHYSICIANS’ BULLETIN 17

INCIDENCE OF DEFECTIVE SPEECH IN SCHOOL CHIL- DREN IN NEW YORK STATE EXCLUSIVE OF

NEW YORK CITY, BUFFALO AND ROCHESTER Rather an extensive survey of defective speech among children in the

public schools in New York State was made in 1931. It did not include New York City, Buffalo and Rochester. Of the pupils examined 69,492 came from rural sections, 66,859 from villages with a population of over 4,500 and 150,542 from cities and larger villages. In all 286,893 children were reported upon. Of these 9,498 or 3.3% were found to have some form of defective speech. Stammering was the most frequent defect found. Children did not appear to outgrow it. It was found proportionately as often in the upper as in the lower grades. Aphonia and acute nasality also seemed to persist in the higher grades. Lisping, lolling and acute defective phona- tion, largely due to habit, accounted for nearly two-thirds of all of the cases reported. These defects seemed to diminish as the child advanced in school. On the other hand speech defects due to organic disorders or emotional instability seemed to persist.

DEFECTIVE SPEECH WORK IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

This condition when found seemed to persist.

IN SCHENECTADY, N. Y. In Schenectady every new entrant to school is referred to a special

teacher in charge of speech conditions. Every child giving any indication of defective speech, in any form, is sent to the Medical Inspection De- partment for a complete, physical, mentai and sociological examination.

A definite program of re-education of the child is then prepared, after consultation and the pupil is put in charge of the special teacher for defective s-peech.

The teacher in charge of the work has taken special preparation, under the direction of a leading exponent of speech improvement. Under this plan defective speech seems to be well controlled in the schools in the city.

RAW OR PASTEURIZED MILK In the extensive Lanarkshire milk experiment its authors concluded

that “in so far as the conditions of this investigation are concerned, the effects of raw and pasteurized milk on growth in weight and height are, SO far as we can judge, equal.” The author of this article has rearranged the figures under the three groups 5, 6 and 7 years; 8 and 9: 10 and 11, taking boys and girls separately, and produces tables’which show a slight but distinct superiority on the basis of weight and height of raw over pasteurized milk. For a11 the children grouped together the advantage of raw milk for growth in weight is 0.86+0.42 and for height 0.345+0.006. The actual differences are admittedly small, but the experiment only lasted for four months.-W. G. Savage, Bzrll. Hyg., Aug., 1931, p. 639.