MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 111, 18 August 1910, Page 4

MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN.

A proportion of school children are physically unsound, this being proved in every school where medical inspection has been permitted. It was lately shown that a very large number of children in a Feilding school required dental treatment. This is grave physical unsoundness. Proper mastication of food and its assimilation is the very first consideration in man and woman building. In the bad: old days, when folk were more ignorant than now, children were punished 1 for being physically unsound. Stupidity may be in reality deafness or adenoids. Misbehaviour may easily be induced by ill-health, and general inability to ledfn is more frequently than not traceable to physical causes. The immense importance of, getting the race into fighting trim for the battle of life while it is in the "milk-tooth", age is now generally accepted. This phase has developed since the great falling off of the baby crop in most civilised countries. Elaborate systems of preserving children are undertaken in every continental country; millions of pounds a year are spent in England for lie physical well-being of the children, and Tasmania, which is generally credited witli being the sleepiest State in the Dominions, has a system of medical inspection of school children. In one original medical report we were allowed to see, the medical examiner found that in a single Tasmaniian school 45 per i cent, of the children were suffering from post-nasal growths—the result of maternal ignorance or inefficiency during the children's infancy. It is feasible that if medical inspection is necessary in Tasmania it is necessary in 'New Zealand, especially as the birth-rate is' proportionately smaller than in the "Apple State." Dr. Mason, who was formerly Chief Health Officer for New Zealand, lately said that England ihad entered heart and soul into the business of saving the children. >lt does not follow, of course, that even if a child 1 has defects it will not live to be an old man or an old woman, But the point is that the healthy being will never become a burden. He will be a satisfaction to the State and to himself. If every person in the State were normally healthy, there would be no social problems. And the way to try to avoid social sorrows is to see that every school child' is as healtby as science can make him.