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Show COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 25 I single one of the 22 States where the Government owes this cam-paign to the Indians should remain uncovered during the coming year. Approximately 20,000 Indian children competed for prizes in I special tuberculosis study and composition work thereon. All pupils above the second grade were required to take part. The manual of tuberculosis published by the office was used as a basis for the facts taught. Five hundred and sixty-one prizes were awarded-gold, silver, and bronze buttons. The office wrote a personal letter to each child receiving a prize; and some letters received from the children, written apparently at their own initiative, have shown the deeply practical hold this contest has obtained in their lives. One of the most significant showings in these letters is the children's sponta-neous statements of the interest developed in their parents in good health through this contest. Thus, we have another proof of the influence of education through children upon parents. The three tuberculosis sanatorium schools have been distinctly improved during the year. That at Fort Lapwai has been almost completely overhauled and rehabilitated. This school began with a, small experimental tuberculosis school for the Nez Perch pupils, and has gradually grown to a modern, well-equipped sanatorium with a capacity of 100, receiving patients from many reservations of the Northwest. It is now under the independent management of a phy-sician superintendent. The Phoenix sanatorium has been enlarged and is becoming a real factor in the fight on behalf of incipient tubercular pupils in the Southwest. At Laguna a high-altitude sanatorium is being developed to meet cases requiring treatment in high altitudes. These three sanatoria have shown that the belief that Indians could not be successfully treated in sanatoria is a fal-lacy. During the last year there were at these three sanatoria 5 deaths and 116 cases of distinct improvement and 14 cures. In the light of these results the office believes that there should be at least one well-equipped sanatorium in each area of the Indian country marked off from others by distinctive climatic conditions. Thus, all incipient and advanced patients of a reservation who are suffering from tuberculosis should have this help for themselves, and their community should have this protection. A corps of ophthalmologists is being built up against trachoma, The work of these men is primarily the instruction of the local agency and school physicians in the practical methods of operation and treatment. Under the direct s u p e ~ i o nof these teaching phy-sicians more than 3,000 cases have been operated upon this year, and more than 8,000 cases have been treated by the reguIar agency and school physicians A pamphlet on the treatment of trachoma, writ-ten by two service ophthalmologists, has been distributed to a l l |
