“EXAGGERATED NONSENSE”
JUVENILE PHYSICAL STANDARD NEW ZEALANDERS NOT A B GRADE PEOPLE [Special to the ‘Stak.’l WELLINGTON, July 18. “ Exaggerated nonsense ” is the term applied hy the public health officer whose attention was called to Dr Gunson’s Auckland statement that New Zealanders are physically a B grade people. He suggested that the soundest criteria are the mortality statistics and expectation of life, in respect to which New Zealand has an enviable world record.
The Health Department’s figures relating to the examination of 51,000 children, on which the Auckland criticism was based, classed as physical defects such points as uncleanliness, while dental cane accounted for 18.36 per cent,, enlarged tonsils 12 per cent, of the total physical defects. Mild defects, causing round shoulders, totalled 14.37 per cent., while on the other, hand tuberculous conditions were found in only .07 children, and nervous defects in .48. New Zealand school children had been subjected to official height and weight tests since 1913, the results showing a steady advance in both respects during 20 years. The only exact correponding data available related to the children of the Toronto schools, who,_ while close to the New Zealand juvenile physical standard, were not, quite equal.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Star, Issue 22084, 18 July 1935, Page 8
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199“EXAGGERATED NONSENSE” Evening Star, Issue 22084, 18 July 1935, Page 8
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