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The Iconography of Child Public Health: Between Medicine and Reform
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concluded that it was impossible to deal adequately with this subject in a course of lectures delivered by a physician at the close of a high school course; see T. G. Hunter and C. H. Gundry, “School Health Practices: Ritualistic or Purposeful ?” Canadian Journal of Public Health 46, 1 (January 1955): 59–64. 35 Roberts, “Venereal Problem in Large Towns and Small Cities,” 65. 36 Beall, file 4.1, 3, Historical Pamphlets and Bulletins, Department of Health, RG 10-30-A.1-4.08, Public Archives of Ontario. 37 Thom, Normal Youth, 21; see also Sandiford, “The School Programme and Sex Education,” 59–63. 38 Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society, 40–48. 39 The most horrendous example of the gap between rhetoric and practice was the Native residential schools, where both health conditions and the paltry government resources dedicated to inspection and treatment prompted the first federal medical superintendent of Indian health, Peter Bryce, to call their existence “a national crime”; see J. B. Waldram, D. A. Herring, T. K. Young, Aboriginal Health in Canada: Historical, Cultural and Epidemiological Perspectives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 157. Bryce, a public health activist in many areas, published The Story of a National Crime: An Appeal for Justice to the Indians of Canada in 1922. He was unable to win government support for his program of school health nurses, health instruction, and fitness. 40 As late as 1940, about one third of Canadian families were classified “medically indigent” because their family income was less than the $1000 per year, which would allow for basic medical attention; see Canadian Youth Commission, “Appendix C: Some Special Studies and Reports,” Youth and Health (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1946), 60. 41 Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society, 55; S. L. Jean, “Promoting Health through the Schools,” Canadian Nurse 32 (July 1936): 307–10. On school health inspection/education, see Gleason, “Race, Class, and Health,” in this volume. 42 Currey and Nicolle, “Development of a Health Program,” 182. 43 K. E. Dowler, “Co-relating Health Education in a City Secondary School,” Canadian Nurse 25 (1929): 624–27. On gender and health education, see Gleason, “Race, Class, and Health,” and Tennant, “Complicating Childhood,” in this volume. 44 Currey and Nicolle, “Development of a Health Program,” 183. The school served the city of St. Catharines and part of Lincoln County. 45 Ontario Department of Education, Health: A Handbook of Suggestions for Teachers in Public and Private Schools (Toronto: Ryerson, 1938), 1–2. A similar survey of rural Manitoba youth found that 70 per cent of the total exhibited “one or more remediable defects or conditions about which they needed medical advice”; see Canadian Youth Commission, Youth and Health, 60. 46 A. H. Speers, “High School Medical Inspection in Burlington, Ontario,” Canadian Public Health Journal 32, 12 (December (1941): 608–10. It was also noted that students entering from rural schools, many of whom had had no previous medical supervision or health education, presented the most defects. In Manitoba, 3000 students were given physical examinations and talks on social hygiene under the program, which also taught an “outline of health” as part of its mandatory citizenship course. As in every province where young people signed on, the Manitoba participants were all referred to their own doctors for treatment, and “no attempt was made by the visiting physician to suggest such treatment in any case”; see Editorial. “A New Health Venture in Manitoba,” Canadian Pub384 CYNTHIA COMACCHIO lic Health Journal 31, 4 (April 1940): 204. The Manitoba initiative was declared “very successful.” 47 Currey and Nicolle, “Development of a Health Program,” 175–77. 48 Editorial, “School Health Supervision in Secondary Schools,” Canadian Public Health Journal 31, 4 (April 1940): 190. 49 Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society, 165. In 1891, 13.8 per cent of children between the ages of ten and fourteen were “officially” employed in industry; by 1921, the percentage was 3.2. The drop was even more precipitous in agriculture (at least by official count), from 11.4 to 1.9 per cent. Bradbury, Working Families, is the only monograph treatment of the family economy in Canada; S. Morton, Ideal Surroundings, 97–98, notes that, in 1931, only 25 per cent of children over fifteen in Halifax were in school, and only 12 per cent of children in single-parent households. See also N. Sutherland, “We Always Had Work to Do,” Labour/Le Travail 25 (1990): 105–41, and the childhood memories in Sutherland, Growing Up: Childhood from...