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the most (26.7 per cent.)—a fact difficult to satisfactorily
explain. Eyes, ears, throats and noses, teeth and skins call
for systematic and careful medical examination; whilst constitutional
defects and physical want of vitality also require
medical attention. Mentally defective, or feeble-minded, deaf,
dumb, and blind children, epileptics, cripples, and those suffering
from constitutional diseases, such as tuberculosis,
syphilis, etc., should be separated out and dealt with as may
be required. Only those children who are fit physically and
mentally should be allowed to continue school work. In
addition statistics should be collected dealing with anthropological
observations of children (e.g., height, weight, girth of
chest, acuity of hearing and vision, etc.).
To obtain the greatest advantage from the systematic
medical inspection of school children, treatment of a more or
less simple nature must follow in school dispensaries, or
school clinics (as they are called), wherein defects of vision
can be corrected by glasses, teeth attended to, skin diseases
treated, adenoids removed, and so on.
So much for general diseases. What is equally important
is the subject of infectious diseases — schools being now
recognised media for the spread of such diseases as measles,
whooping cough, chicken-pox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc.
It is clear that systematic medical daily examinations would
lead to the discovery of children commencing with infectious
disease, and by the rigid exclusion from school, not only of
such children, but also of all contacts with them, the spread
of infection would be prevented. With the exception of the
notifiable diseases, we depend for our knowledge of other
infectious diseases upon the non-medical diagnosis of school
teachers, attendance officers, etc., and this is not in practice
satisfactory. Much more good would accrue if a systematic
examination of all school children were made by medical
men, and all doubtful cases of infectious diseases isolated
and excluded from schools as also all contacts. This exclusion
may be individual or collective, i.e., separate children, or
a whole class or school—the latter for (a) infectious outbreaks,
(b) disinfection purposes, or (c) insanitary conditions
of school premises. In this connection, reference may be
made to the abolition in March, 1903, of what was known as
the Epidemic Grant, allowed under Article 101* of the
Elementary Education 1901 Code. By this Article a grant