SERVICE TO SCHOOLS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 672, 25 May 1929, Page 27

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 rising 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: The first object of the school medical service is the 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 aftercare. and the adaptation of our educational system to their needs and capacity.

This 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. Another, wider and more public effect of the organisation, 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 sani-

tary environment for the people. 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 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 j future. School medical service has a i vastly wider purpose the j the collec- \ tion of medical statistics and even the individual amelior «*ion 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 1 healed,” it is the prelude of national efficiency. 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 schoolroom: 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 defective 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 1 the child’s school days and still more into his after-days. 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. When the reader turns to study j these dull records of the school medical service 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.