HEALTH NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20702, 27 April 1929, Page 22

HEALTH NOTES.

SERVICE TO SCHOOLS. VALUE TO COMMUNITY. Contributed by the Department of Health. The School Medical Service is now recognised as an essential part of State activities on behalf of the risilig generation, and in this respect the following statement from the last annual report of Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer, Board of Education, England, is of interest!'Thus, the first object of the School Medical Service is tl. - ascertainment of the ailing child and its effective treatment, an objective which involves careful examination of each individual child, patient “ following-up,” the provision of the means of treatment and suitable after-care, and the adaption of our educational system to their needs and capacity. The pursuance of this service entails much organisation and expenditure, but it is a service which is profoundly changing for the better the whole physical and mental life of hundreds of thousands of individual children, and opening for each of them the gates of opportunity. I his systematic medical inspection of all children is a heavy and exacting undertaking, and the records of it make dull and monotonous reading. But it is absolutely necessary thus to find the facts. Each child must be examined and' studied individually, for each has itS' individual characteristics. In total it is the grand inquest of a nation, and the only means for discovery, and then strengthening, the weak points of the individual child. Yet there is another, a wider and more public effect *>f the organisation of the physical care of the child. It is that of laying the foundation of the national health. In former times, even down to 50 years ago, the duty and scope of the public health service was to provide a sanitary environment for the people. Housing, clean streets, water supply, drainage and sewerage, refuse removal, ‘ disinfection, quarantine, the isolation hospital and poor law relief constituted the principal programme. But the advance of medicine and surgery has built upon that foundation a new superstructure. For now the sphere of the public health service, though still to maintain a sanitary environment, is also concerned with maternity and motherhood, the protection of infancy and childhood, health insurance, industrial welfare, dietary and food supply, international health, the direct treatment and prevention of disease—tuberculosis, rickets, venereal disease, diphtheria, typhoid, cancer, rheumatism—the creation of the great public medical services, the restoration of_ the cripple, the re-education of the blind, and above all the establishment of a healthy way of life. It is a new kind of emancipation, the aim of which is not the improvement of the externals of man’s life alone, but the improvement of man himself, the prolongation of his days,'the strengthening of his physique, the gift of health, the enlargement of his capacity. Milton’s “ betterment of Man’s estate ” is giving way to the betterment of man; sanitation is surpassed by social evolution. It is manifest that a. healthy childhood of sound physique is the genesis on which alone this new preventive medicine can be established. Every infant saved from death in infancy and every school child equipped for useful citizenship is a living stone in this new building. The school doctor who makes possible the mending of an ailing child makes two blades of grass grow where one grew, before; He is laying the only possible foundation of national health and he builds for. the future. For the routine work of the school medical service has a vastly wider purpose than the collection of medical statistics and even the individual amelioration of a particular child. It makes practicable a fuller education of the people as a whole, it adds to life “ the joy of those who are healed,” it is the prelude of national efficiency. Let us make no mistake about it. The science and art of medicine has contributed substantially, not to say immeasurably, to the higher evolution of school life. It was the apostles of medicine who demanded more warmth, light and-air in the school-room; it was they who made evident the need for the practical teaching of hygiene; they who proved that the child must be fed before it could be taught; they who won for it the larger physiological interpretation of physical training and of games; they who said that the system of education must be adapted and modified for the child. Count up the thoughts with which these five scientific reforms have filled the heart of England, and consider what they are accomplishing in bringing “sweetness and light” into the child’s school days and still more into his afterdays. The vitalising effect of sunlight and the open air; the reward of obedience to the laws of health; nutrition as the one thing needful; the necessity of physical exercise to growth and development; and an enlightened education of the abnormal and retarded child—can it be denied that these ai;c among the supreme gifts and liberties which a single generation has added to the old school rule of an oppressive discipline, dedicated to Greek verb and Latin Verse ? If when the reader turns to study these dull records of the School Medical Service, its audit and. account, lie will come 'with understanding, he will find a. plain tale of the narrow way, the discovery of. the ailing child and the healing of tens of thousands of individuals! But on closer observation with the seeii -eye he will find nothing less than the broad highway of a nation’s health. He will discover the hidden secret of an unseen reform, a service of science and humanity, which is silently but certainly changing the prospects and hopes of the English people.