Excerpt from The Construction and Maintenance of School Infirmaries and Sanatoria

Tun gratifying success which attended its issue of a Code of Rules for the Prevention of Infectious and Contagious Diseases in Schools, has encouraged the Medical Officers of Schools' Association to respond to the request, preferred by many members of the medical and scholastic professions, for definite recommendations in respect to the construction and maintenance of those portions of school buildings which are commonly set apart for the treatment of the sick and injured. It was urged that, as, from the sanitarian's point of view, the population of a school differs in many particulars from an equal number of the general community, so school hospitals must dih'or from ordinary hospitals and that as the Medical Ofiicers of schools might be trusted to have learnt what was required in this respect, so, also, they might indicate the direction in which their wants could be satisfactorily met. For, while the treatment of disease, both within and outside of schools, has been approximately formulated in the expression of combined experiences; the plans hitherto followed in constructing and managing those buildings devoted to the treatment of illnesses and accidents in schools are multifarious, at the least. In many cases such buildings are but slight modifications or imperfect adaptations of structures originally intended for some quite different purpose and even where school hospitals have been specially built as such, they are mostly the several outcomes of individual minds, working independently, and often largely influenced and even hampered by special local considerations. The result is a variety of experiments, more or less successful; with but little evidenceof any such common basis of operations as might be regarded as fitting and reasonable when dealing with the common and universal factors of school-life and school-sickness.

Under these circumstances it seemed possible, no less than desirable, to collate the results of various observers, and to note the points of general agreement to indicate the main lines to be followed with the best advantage in the future; and to point out where modifications were either necessary or advisable in existing systems; to ascertain what was essential under any circumstances, and to note the special conditions in which certain deviations from the ordinary standard were permissible.

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