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Show 12 COMMISSIONER INDIAN AFFAIRS. absolutely no excuse for a waste acre or overlooked opportunity on a achool farm. We need nll they will produce, and can not justify the purchase of any-thing we can raise. It is inconsistent and indefensible for us to expect Indian boys and girls to return home from their schools'and do more than they have witnessed their teachers doing for them when they are suppostd to be qualify- Lug themselves for industrial equipment and self-support. Soper!ntendents, inspwtors, supervisors, and special agents are directed to glve this matter their prompt and most careful attention and fully advise me of the steps taken by field o5cers to make effective these suggestions. HEALTH. With the impetus given to the health work by the increased appro-priations for the &cal year 1914 comes the realization that the much neglected sanitary conditions of the past among the Indian tribes can be tremendously improved, and sanitary homes and good health replace the squalor of the past, on most of the reservations. The opening of many Indian reservations for settlement by white men has made the health problems more pronounced in the districts where the white settlers have come in contact with the Indians. The Indian must not only receive treatment, and, if possible, be cured of trachoma, tuberculosis, etc., but he must be trained to live in sanitary homes and care for his personal hygiene, so that he will not become a menace to his neighbors, either Indian or white. The work of eradicating tuberculosis and trachoma from among the Indians will be continued in a most aggressive manner. The children must be protected in the schools as well as in the home. Disease is easily transmitted to the homes of the healthy from the homes of those ascted with tuberculosis, trachoma, etc., and it be-comes an imperative duty of the Indian Service to see that the schools maintained by the Government for the education of Indian children do not become a focus for the transmission of disease between tribes rather than an instrument for the eradication of disease. In the Indian schools there has been a determined effort to detect the tubercular cases in their iqcipiency and place them in a sani-tarium for treatment, where there is one available, or return the child to the home, more for the protection of the well children than in the hope of helping the afflicted one. The trachomatous patients are segregated in the schools and kept under treatment. There is a vital necessity for more hospitals to care for these chil-dren returned to their homes. Often they represent families which have a number of cases of tuberculosis needing sanitarium treatment, or the removal of a case of active tuberculosis to a healthy home may introduce the disease there and form another source of infection to ' the surrounding Indians. |