CHILDREN’S PHYSIQUE

Evening Star, Issue 22086, 20 July 1935, Page 6

CHILDREN’S PHYSIQUE

DR GUNSON REITERATES “ B GRADE " CHARGE PINT OF MILK CURE [Special, to the ‘ Star.’l AUCKLAND, July 19. The denial by Mr H. D. Mahon, head master of the Auckland Grammar School, of Dr E. B. Gunson’s statement that “ already we-- are a B grade people physically, with _ all the signs of increasing degeneration,” and the comment bv a public health officer in Wellington' that the statement .was “exaggerated nonsense,” were referred to this morning by Dr Gunson. “ I look upon tho Auckland Grammar School boys as the Life Guards of the school army,” he said. “They do not represent the average in physique of the school children of this country. It must be readily admitted that they are a fine body ot boys, and 1 view them with the greatest admiration ; but even as far as they are concerned, Mr Mahon admits that they should have their pint of milk a day. “Why? Because he wants their physique sustained. If it is necessary for boys of the physical calibre of those attending the Auckland Grammar School to have their milk ration, how much more necessary is it for the otlier school children, who fall far short of that standard’’? Dealing with what he termed the anonymous criticism of a public health officer,” Dr Gunson insisted, that the soundest criterion of public- health was not the mortality figures, which showed the incidence of disease, hut the morbidity figures, and if his critic was pleased with those he (Dr Gunson) as a Hospital Board member and taxpayer was not. The test of nutrition introduced in 1913 was entirely inadequate to-day. During the last 20 years the whole subject of nutrition had been rewritten. During that period New Zealand health records had repeated an appalling story of malnutrition among school children year in and year out. “ I claim,” he said, “ tliat the official figures I quoted are open to this interpretation, or they mean nbthing; It is high time that this was plainly to the public who are paying the price they represent in ill-health, inefficiency, and departmental costs.” Dr Gunson said that if the children of the Dominion were supplied with one pint of milk a day, that single act would signalise the dawn of applied preventive medicine in New Zealand. Not only had New Zealand an alarming percentage of physical defects among school children, but the highest incidence of hospital _ disease occurred between the age period of 15 to 25. More significant still was that the hospital mortality figures disclosed the fact that over 50 per cent, of all deaths occurred between the ages of _ls and 45, when health should he at its best. Who would say, asked Dr Gunson, that there was not a direct relationship between the exceptionally poor state of the teeth of New Zealand children and the deficiency of milk in their diet, or between the thousands of digestive diseases that filled the hospitals, and the heavy percentage of dental caries; or between the large number of respiratory diseases among young people, and the chest and other deformities developed during school age?” “ I do not think it can be legitimately counted as part of the duty of a medical officer of health wilfully to mislead the public on this important question,” added Dr Gunson. “On the contrary, we are entitled to look to the department for that measure of enlightenment we are bringing to bear on the position.”