100 YEARS AGO
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
School dental service
IN the prominence that is being given to the need for the care of the teeth we can welcome cheerfully a symptom which suggests that a hitherto too much neglected subject is beginning to receive the attention which its importance merits. From discussion to action is sometimes, however, a long step. It is no new discovery that the teeth of the young people in New Zealand leave so much to be desired that a perpetuation of their deficiencies is incompatible with the best allround development of the race.
There seems no doubt that remedial measures to cope with the prevalence of dental disease in the dominion will have to start with the schools. In this connection a scheme, prepared by a committee appointed for that purpose by the New Zealand Dental Association, was submitted to the Ministers of Public Health and Education respectively within the last few days. The committee has evidently desired to be thorough in its proposals. It suggests that the Government should inaugurate without delay a Dental Department for the purpose of establishing a comprehensive system of school State dentistry; that a Director of the Dental Department should be appointed and sent to the United States to examine the methods there in vogue; and that a comprehensive system for treating the teeth of school children should be adopted.
It is estimated that this task would require the services of two hundred operators per annum, and that the
annual expenditure involved would be £75,400, this being the provision for salaries exclusive of about £8000 for materials. Then the initial cost of the scheme involving the provision of annexes and dental equipment for a large number of schools is set down at £43,880.
To these figures the Minister of Public Health has added an impressive amount as the cost of training the number of dentists who would be required. In all the circumstances, while the efforts of the Dental Association to secure adequate State recognition of the importance of this question of dental treatment for school children are entitled to every sympathy, we are not surprised that the Ministers to whom the scheme was submitted confessed a reluctance to approach the Minister of Finance at the present time with proposals for so considerable an expenditure. While an outlay of £80,000 spread over the community represents a trifle in
comparison with the results, not to be estimated in money, that would accrue from the practice and teaching of dentistry in the schools, it has to be remembered that the country is being taxed more heavily at the present time than ever before, and everything that increases the burden, however slightly, has to be weighed carefully in the balance. We hope, however, that the introduction of some comprehensive scheme of the kind is merely delayed.
Speculators criticised
‘‘I would like to have the pleasure of putting the screw on some of the land speculators in our capital city who are rolling in wealth, on the unearned increment for which the toilers have to sweat through inflated rents. As Christians it is our bounden duty to set ourselves sternly against the social evils that ‘grind the faces of the poor.’ ’’ Rev. E. Evans, from his pulpit recently (states the Wellington Post). — ODT, 15.9.1917.