MEDICAL EXAMINATION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 47, 24 February 1913, Page 8

MEDICAL EXAMINATION.

OF CHRISTCHURCH CHILDREN. Dr. Kerr-Hislop, the recently appointed Government medical officer foi schools in the Canterbury and West Coast district, arrived in Christchurch on Tuesday last. A representative of the Press found the doctor at the Normal School, just commencing operations,! and he witnessed the examination made by the doctor of some of the children. Batches of four hoys at a time paraded before the doctor, and each lad was separately examined, the examination lasting about eight minutes. Each boy wa? stripped to the waist. His chest measurements were taken, apd his eyes, throat, skin, lungs, heart, ears, and teeth carefully examined. Care was also taken to observe if lie possessed any deformities, and also if he had vaccination marks or not. The particulars with regard to each lad were entered on a form, which will be forwarded to the Department of Public Health for statistical purposes. If the inspection, however, reveals anything radically wrong with a child, as enlarged glands or bad teeth, the parents will he notified immediately. The examination of the school children by Dr. Kerr-Hislop will only be confined to the pupils in Standard 11. at the schools, but a general supervision will be exercised over the whole of the schools by the medical officer, and the teachers will be trained to make a general examination of the children in their charge, and report to the doctor anything wrong. Teachers will receive lectures in this subject on Saturdays, from Dr. Kerr-Hislop, and the students at the training college will also receive careful tuition. The result will be that whilst a teacher may not be able to judge whether a child’s heart is sound or not, he should be able to judge on external matters. The batch of four boys whom the pressman found the doctm examining might lie taken as a fail' sample of the children in our schools. All were bright, healthy looking youngsters, with nothing radically wrong with them. But the teeth of all were bad, and in two cases there were slight enlargements of the throat, not enough to warrant an operation, but sufficient to justify treatment.