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health, so that they may be able properly to benefit by their
instruction in the schools; and it should be our ideal to secure
that, when these children leave school at the age of 14 years,
they are fit and healthy and are not disabled by physical defects
from earning their own livings. Year by year a heavy cost is
incurred by the State and by the ratepayers in caring for those
who are physically unfit; and it is calculated that upwards of
fourteen million weeks of sickness occur, among insured persons
alone, every year. It is impossible to estimate the loss of money
and the mental and physical suffering caused by all this disability;
but it is to prevent this waste of life and health and
substance that the School Medical Services throughout the country
are concerned to-day.