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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 13, 1929)
The CHEM AWA AMERICAN Page 2 ■W-IILIM CHEMAWA^AMERICAN Published Weekly at the XT. S. Indian School, Chemawa Oregon. Address all communications to Ruthyn Turney, Manager HmimiiuiuiHimMimiiiiniiuiiiNiiiiiiiimmiNiiinttiuiimiiiiHinHiiiniiminiiiiiiim 60 Cts per Annum Subscription HEALTH SURVEY AT CHEMAWA (Continued from page 1) examination by just such a staff of doctors as the ones that are now examining students at Chemawa. There are two reasons why this work is being done just now—one is that the Department of Indian Affairs and the management of the school itself are increas ingly interested in building up the health of Indian children, and the other is that one of the main jobs always of the Oregon Tuberculosis Association, the oldest and strongest organization in the state, is to build up everybody’s health so that nobody will have tuberculosis, and so it is always looking for a chance to do a good piece of health work. And where could one ever do a piece of health work that would be more worth while than at a big boarding school like Che mawa? The Oregon Tuberculosis Association is not going to claim much of the credit for this work because the doctors and the nurses and other people who are help ing are all giving their time without being paid by any-one, solely because they are interested. Most of the doctors will be chest specialists but there will be others, too, because we are interested in the whole child and not exclusively in his lungs. The Victor Xray Corporation has loaned an Xray machine, because they, too, are interested, besides wanting to show what their littlest machine can do. The school has had an expert Xray technician on the staff for a month taking Xray pictures of the chest of every student in the school. This part of the work —which is really the most expensive of all—is being paid for by the government. One part of the preliminary work has been a skin test that is quite important, but it is equally import ant that the students and their parents shall under stand just what this test means. The test is applied one day and a day or two, or three later, perhaps, there will be a little red spot around it, or perhaps quite a large red spot with swelling. This does not mean that the child has tuberculosis—most of them are not sick at all—but it does mean that at sometime he has been where there was a tuberculosis patient and has taken into his system a few tubercu losis germs, technically called an infection, which ■ 1 'III HI, -HI Hl! I » get to working and finally make him sick if he doesn’t make it his business always to stay well. There is less and less tuberculosis in this country every year, but there is still a great deal and unfortun ately there is still a good deal among Indians and if we are ever to get rid of it it has got to be by protecting the children and by keeping them, even though they may have been infected, from ever breaking down with tuberculosis. There are a good many children at Chemawa who show that they have at some time been infected—be fore they came here, of course—and there may be a few—because some of them have lived for a long time in a home where there was a sick tuberculosis patient —who will be found to need very special care and building up to keep them from being ill. The children are to be examined by some of the very finest physicians in Oregon and it is earnestly hoped that if they advise giving any child special sanatorium care the parents will see to it at once that this care is given. We hardly ever would have any one seriously sick with tuberculosis if everybody who shows the first little beginning signs of it could have the right kind of care immediately, and could stay under the right kind of care until he is entirely well. The medical examinations were to begin on Nov. 12th, yesterday, and—because a great deal of prelim inary work has been done, and because there will be quite a staff of examining physicians, it is hoped that the work can be completed by the end of the week. Soon after that there will be another story about it in the Chemawa American, but in the meanwhile the Oregon Tuberculosis Association which really started the whole thing off and is putting quite a bit of time and some money—Christmas seal sale money—into it, sends its greetings to all the students and all the parents who may read this story and urges them all to keep in mind that the thing to strive for now and always is Radiant Health. Radiant health protects against tuberculosis, but it does much more than that, it makes life one long happy experience from begin ning to end and that is worth striving for. LOCAL Last Wednesday evening the student body convened in the auditorium and enjoyed a real “pep” meeting. Two new boys are enrolled in Brewer Hall, Fred Kalama from Nespelem, Wash., and Charles McOnlly of Fort Hall, Idaho. Mrs. Lottie Taylor Turner, whose home was form erly in Paris, Tennessee, but who is now a matron in the Children’s Farm Home at Corvallis, is visiting Miss French, a teacher in our domestic science department.
