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-3- Glittings, Tuberculosis in Infancy and Childhood.

Many of the special orthopedic institutions, almost all of the "orthopedic" sanatoria, and some of the general sanatoria have "sun porches" for heliotherapeutic treatment. The patients' schedules are divided so as to bring them to the porches in rotating groups. The daily program at the North American Sanitarium, for example, is as follows:

7:00 A. M. Rising hour for out-of-bed patients.
7 :30 A. M. Breakfast. Recreation until 9:00 A. M.
9:00 A. M. School for the older children. Heliotherapy treatment for the younger children.
12:00 A. M. Dinner.
1 :30-3 :30 P. M. The older children have heliotherapy.
5:00 P. M. Supper. All children are in bed by 6:00 P. M.

In addition to an academic teacher, occupational therapy is taught semi-weekly by a visiting teacher. Religious instruction is given every Tuesday afternoon.

All tuberculosis institutions emphasize the necessity of fresh air. Dormitories are rarely heated, sleeping bags and army blankets being furnished during the winter months. A minimum of clothing, out-of-door recreation whenever possible, and a constructive diet are necessary to build up the tuberculous child and avoid pulmonary infection.

Summer Camps.

In localities lacking facilities for all-year convalescent care, summer camps frequently care for some of the children. They are inexpensively supplied and operated, and achieve surprisingly excellent results. The Crippled Child of January, 1924, describes a summer camp constructed by the Rochester, New York, Rotary Club. The club was donated an old house and lot on the shore of a nearby lake. They met and proceeded to divide responsibilities, scrubbing, painting, wiring, and renovating the building. They installed new plumbing and obtained a staff to operate the camp, including a teacher, furnished by the Rochester Board of Education. The article continues, "Forty quarts of milk a day were consumed last summer, and the children gained from three to nine pounds each, with the exception of one boy who was already much overweight. Eight little girls and nine boys learned to swim.

The average gain in weight per child during the summer of 1923 at the Lake Allyn Summer Camp for Crippled Children, near Cincinnati, Ohio, was five and three-quarters pounds and the greatest individual gain was fifteen pounds. Summer homes are sometimes operated by institutions and frequently by organizations. The New York City Association for the Aid of Crippled Children supplies Robin's Nest, a summer fresh air home at Tarrytown, New York. Rotary Clubs have made available a number of fresh air camps of the type described in this chapter. It is the custom of a number of Salvation Army branches to maintain summer camps where crippled children may be strengthened by the invigorating country environment. The Outing Association for Crippled Children, in Chicago, operates a summer camp at Brown Lake, near the city; and the South Side Crippled Children's Aid Society, in the same city, is interested in Camp Happy Haven, located in northern Indiana. The Orange Fresh Air Home, at Bradley Beach, New Jersey, is supplied with children from the New Jersey Orthopedic Hospital at Orange.

Custodial Institutions.

Except for the unfortunately incurable children, the need for "asylum" or custodial homes for juvenile cripples is rapidly being minimized. During the early stages of orthopedic work, when orthopedists had not learned modern treatment for "surgical" tuberculosis (then by far the leading causative disease), a very large proportion of crippled children were considered beyond assistance. It then seemed most expedient to place many of them in custodial institutions where they would at 1east cease to be burdens to indigent families. Today, most of these patients are considered curable, and convalescent homes or "boarding out" to families have supplanted almost entirely the necessity of asylum institutions. Most of these make efforts to furnish the children with remedial treatment. There is still a need for custodial homes for the incurable children of state which have devoted all of their attention to remedial agencies, and such institutions are now being planned.

CHAPTER VII

EDUCATING CRIPPLED CHILDREN

"A graduate of the Spalding School for Crippled Children in Chicago, Illinois, is owner of a commercial printing establishment with two large motor presses and other modern equipment, all purchased through his own efforts."-1- Joe Sullivan edited a newspaper at the age of twenty years.-2- A one-armed Ohio youth operates a typewriter at the rate of 65 words a minute. Another Ohioan, paralyzed from the hips down at the age of twelve years, has completed a course in commercial illustrating and now is prepared to provide valuable service to a local advertising agency. -3- These selected examples illustrate the goal of the magic pathway, the ultimate culmination to which the efforts of the co-ordinated machinery of this social movement are directed. The real handicap of the crippled child is not, in itself, his physical dissimilarity to other children, (for physical blemishes are soon submerged in prominence by excellences of personality) but his difficulty in rendering himself self-supporting and in obtaining contact with those intellectual pleasures which are made available through education. In the words of Edgar F. Allen, "cure them if we can, but educate them we must!"-1-