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Show REPORT OF THE C O ~ S S I O m R OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 17 be if the buildings were used only by white children. Hence fire pro-tection has been introduced in many schools, and in others is being supplied as rapidly as possible. One of the fruitful sources of codagration is the use of coal-oil lamps. However effective the means of fire protection may be, it is good policy to minimize this source of danger by the substitntion of safer and better methods of lighting. At the larger schools inde-pendent electric-light systems have been introduced, and at several others the current has been taken from the neighboring cities. This method of lighting, while largely experimental so far as Indian schools are concerned, is believed to be the very best, taking into consideration safety and the quality of the light. Light is an all-important consideration in adndian school. Windows are grouped so as to introduce it into study and school rooms after the most approved methods, and the principle of thus protecting the eyes applies with equal or greater force for night work. The eyeof an Indian boy is more susceptible to injury than that of his white brother. Born and bred among prairies and forests, the "eagle eye" may not be an inappropriate term; but when confined within four walls, and after pro. tracted studies, the eye is the first piece of his bodily mechanism to feel the effects of the strain. It is, therefore, a11 important that the very best light should be furnished. Coal-oil lamps, aside fiom their dangerous qualities, do not present an ideal light and electricity or gas should be substituted when possible. While slightly more expensive, they are not really so when safety of property and the effect upon the eye itself is considered. At Pipestone, a small nonreservation school in Minnesota, a gasoline automatic gas machine has been introduced, with which a number of improved Welsbaoh burners are used. It has not been installed a suf-ficient length of time to judge actcurately of its value in an Indian school, yet in the few months of trial already given it, the superintend-ent reports favorable results as to efficiency and cost of the system. In the equipment of recently constructed bath houses, the 'Lring" bath-a modified and improved form of the shower-has been adopted. Where tubs are used it is difficult, if not impossible, to have the water changed after each bathing, and if changed, unless the tub is thoroughly scrubbed and cleansed, disease germs will cling to the sides, ready to perform their deadly work of infection upon the next occupant. The ring bath is unquestionably the most economical and effective. It dis-tributes the previously tempered water to all portions of the body without the shock which sometimes accompanies the shower when a person of feeble vitality undergoes the downponr of water upon the head. Before taking the bath the bather is required to soap the body thoroughly, and then on entering the properly tempered water is evenly distributed, carrying away with it the dirt and filth with which it is contaminated. Such a bath is physiologically considered 6782-2 |