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8
Mental Deficiency.— During the year under review 12
children were seen who were mentally defective. The mentally
defective children in the school at Finchley were inspected
twice during the year by the School Medical Officer.
A REVIEW OF THE METHODS EMPLOYED FOR
TREATMENT.
Treatment can be provided for the ailing child in one of
three ways:—(1) From the general practitioner in his capacity
as family physician; (2) at the voluntary Hospitals; and (3) at
the School Clinic.
The School Clinic is situated in Topsfield Parade, Crouch
End, and during the year it has been instrumental in providing
treatment for 3,865 children, who attended there on 11,830
occasions.
The treatment of various conditions will now be described
under the same headings and in the same order as those in the
previous section of this Report.
Malnutrition.—Cod liver oil and malt is provided at the
recommendation of the Medical Officer to such children as would
appear to need it, and milk is given by the Care Committee in
certain instances.
It may be said that the proper treatment of malnutrition,
of the state of sub-health, is often a matter of the greatest
difficulty. The ailing child is paying the penalty of the conditions
tinder which it is living—late hours, improper food, overcrowding,
lack of sunshine and fresh air—all these take a toll
of the health of the little child. The remedy is to take the child
away from these adverse surroundings and conditions and to
allow the child to live for a time in natural and healthy circumstances.
We have at present no open-air school, but it is hoped
that before long we may be able to establish one. If so it would
be a non-residential school, and although it would be of immense
benefit to the health of our children it would not provide a
remedy for that class of child who needs to be taken away to
the country for three or six months. I wrote in my Report for
1923 of the need which existed for a convalescent home or for
a residential open-air school. That need is being met to a small
extent by the sending of boys, two at a time, to such a school