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Show COMMISSIONER OP INDIAN AFFAIRS. 9 Nm.-There is a very general conviction that all Indian children of the first, second, and third grades should be required to devote more time to the study of English. ' Arrangements are being made to meet this demand as rapidly as funds will permit. Additional school rooms and additional teachers wlll be provided so that all pupils of the first three grades in all schools can be kept in the academic department a!l of each day. Formal industrial instruc-tion will then be begun m the foufth grade. It is not anticipated that additional funds for conducting Indian schools will come through larger appropriations; the necessity, there-fore, vnfronts us of app!ying measures of,e$onomy with such care and wisdom as w~ lnlo t cnpple essential actlvities.but make substan-tial gains by ,better or anlzation, closer supervision, and more effi-cient instruction. In t%is way pupils should be enabled to accom-lish a standard grade of work within a shorter period than is now $one, which would result in an eaflier completion of the courses pro-vided and some consequent reduction of Federal expenditure. A thorough revision of the course of study has been made, with the intention of having it effective within the current school year. HEALTH. The year covered by this report has shown an increase of popula-tion, an excess of blrths over deaths, and has compared favorably with other years respecting the health of the Indian people. There have been epidemic invasions on several of the reservations; and owing to a shortage of re ular physicians and nurses, progress against tuberculosis and trac% o ma mas not entirely satisfactory. &VENTION OF DISEASE.-AS the line of progress advances society in favored communities seeks more and more to advance itself through appeals to all agencies that may offer protection and, cpn-tribute to its welfare. The time has come when preventive medicine, with its coadjutants, philanthropy and social uplift, must be applied to the solution of the health problems of the Indian Service. Hered-ity, which may be defined as the genetic relation between successive generations, is now recognized as an important factor of preventive medicine. Its laws should be taught in the Indian schools, particu-larly with regard to their application to health. Education and en-vironment have but limited powel: to improve an imperfect basis of human life, but diseases and impairments that can not be cured may be revented. '!he physician, as well as the sanitarian, is helpless in the presence of many deplorable conditions, both in the individual and in society at large, which are inherited from ancestors-conditions which might have been prevented, but can never be entirely remedied when they'exist. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes said more than a half cen-tury ago that the time to begin the training of a child is a hundred years before its birth. The best protection that one can have against disease is inherited vital energy manifesting itself in healthy organic cells t,hat will resppnd to every favoring force of hablt, environment, education,, and training that may encompFs them, whlle 81 Lhe same time offering stern resistance to all inlmlcal Influences and factors that beset th%m. MEDICAL~ ouc~. -TheI ndian Service countenances no faas and trusts no fanciful theories; its policy is to make use of all scientific |
