The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

AuQust. 1927 The Health Bulletin 21
expect to have seen an announcement
that the Federal Government of
Mexico had ordered all the school
children beheaded. In the United
States, and certainly in North Carolina,
we have a hard enough time in
enforcing a requirement that all
school children must be vaccinated
against smallpox before being admitted
to a public school. Now here
comes the Federal Government of
Mexico and simply issues a requirement
which will guarantee the protection
of the five or six million
school children of the Republic of
Mexico protection from scarlet fever
and diphtheria. Verily public health
is making progress.
HOOKWORM INFECTION IN MOUNTAIN 'SECTIONS
In
a trip the writer took about ten
years ago in
a Ford car through the
valley of Virginia in company with
Dr. Brumfield, Professor of Preventive
Medicine in one of the Virginia
agricultural colleges at that time, it
was observed by both of us that in
this hill country and mountain and
valley district in a trip of more than
a hundred miles that numerous children
encountered along the way gave
every evidence of suffering from
hookworm. Dr. Brumfield expressed
the positive opinion that a greater
per cent of the children in the mountain
sections and red hill country
were infected -with hookworms than
in the lowlands. Dr. Brumfield is himself
a product of the hill country of
Virginia, and therefore spoke from
experience.
The foregoing is recalled on receiving
a letter from a friend in the
extreme western part of North Carolina.
This friend states that very
^few privies of any kind outside of the
incorporated towns are to be found,
and extremely few of the sanitary
type of privies except in the very best
and wealthiest of the homes in that
section.
The writer of the letter describes
a trip through the most beautiful of
j. mountain country in which several
I stops were made at well-to-do homes
I in which magazines and newspapers
I and other evidences of culture and
modern conveniences were present,
but in which a great percentage of
the children had the appearance of
suffering from hookworm. In response
to a question asked the father
of some of these children seen at one
home he replied that the pallor of his
children at that time was probably
due to eating too many green apples.
In this connection it is well to record
again that the eating of unwashed
apples and plums and other fruit
picked up from the ground and eaten
raw without washing is frequently a
source of primary hookworm infection.
The writer of the letter thinks that
it would be well to urge, along with
other hookworm control measures,
that a very important part of prevention
is the thorough washing of
all fruit before eating.
Children of the County Superintendent of
Schools of Hyde County feeding Hyde County
corn to a flock of Rhode Island Reds in the
rear of the new school house at Swan Quarter.
It is said that Hyde County has some of the
most productive corn land in North Carolina.
These children and the poultry indicate that
they can produce other things, too.