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7
To the Chairman and Members of the
EDUCATION COMMITTEE.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report as School
Medical Officer for the year ending December 31st, 1936.
The only change in staff during the year was the resignation
of Dr. Betty C. Hamilton, Dental Surgeon, on April 30th, and
the appointment in her place on May 18th of Miss Winifred
Hunt, L.D.S.
The work of routine medical and dental inspection in the
schools and the schemes of treatment—medical, aural,
ophthalmic, dental and orthopaedic—at the School Clinic have
been carried out as in former years and the results of these
activities are furnished in statistical tables at the end of this
Report.
Nutrition.
Figures have little meaning in themselves, and only become
intelligible when compared with figures of former years and the
statistics of other districts. For example, the nutrition table
shows that in 1936 (as in 1935) there were no children suffering
from bad malnutrition. The percentage found with "slightly
subnormal nutrition" was 3 per cent. in 1936, as compared with
6 per cent. in 1935. The examinations were done in all the
schools in both of these years by the same persons, namely, Dr.
Jean Sutherland in the Girls' and Infants' Departments and by
myself in the Boys' Departments. There can be no doubt whatever
that, as a result of the steady advocacy of good fresh foods
at home, together with the increasing use of milk in the schools,
the general standard of nutrition is rising. The nutrition campaign,
launched some years ago, is giving results which are
obvious to medical officers, teachers and all who have opportunities
for close observation of the physical condition of the
child population. Still better results will follow in many
children when it is more fully appreciated that vitaminconcentrates
are not substitutes for good food in growing children.
Research in nutrition during recent years has been directed
almost entirely to the discovery of vitamins and their properties.