In the context of public education expansion in Argentina since the end of the 19th century the sanitary initiatives that came from the public powers took into account the child population that attended schools. The concern for children's health at school age ended up in the interest for different pathologies that, as in the case of the treatment for trachoma, implied previous studies and discussions around the alternative ways of dealing with the illness and the dilemma of segregation between healthy and ill kids. Thus, this paper examines the connection between education and trachoma from 1884 to 1940 through the analysis of general aspects of sanitary school attention and of the pathology until the 1920s; the particular experience of a special school that treated children who suffered from trachoma in de North of Argentina and the effect of a social and sanitary school system based on the national legislation from the 1930s.
Argentina; trachoma; schooling; infection