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31
REPORT OF RETIRING MEDICAL OFFICER.
Until October 4th, 1939, I was your Medical Officer of Health
and School Medical Officer, and therefore responsible for the
supervision of the Health Services of the district for the first nine
months of the year.
To write the report for a part of the year, especially after
leaving office, would be very difficult owing to the comparative
inaccessibility of documents and returns. The Annual Report also
contains suggestions for the extension of the work or its adaptation
to altered circumstances. For these reasons, it would be not only
difficult but inadvisable for the outgoing officer to write the Report,
and Dr. Payne has very kindly undertaken the report for the whole
year of 1939. He has suggested that as I was at the time of my
retirement one of the very few School Medical Officers who has
seen the birth of the School Medical Service, and acted as School
Medical Officer throughout the 31 years for the same district a
short history of the origin and development of the Service in the
district might be of some use. On account of the necessity of saving
paper, my remarks must necessarily be brief.
It would take too long to give even the steps which led up
to the passage of the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act of
1907, but undoubtedly the physical condition of recruits for the
Army, and the circumstances revealed during the Boer War,
aroused public opinion on the matter. Commissions and Departmental
Committees were appointed and reported. In 1903 the Royal
Commission on Physical Training (Scotland) issued a report of the
greatest interest from the point of view of the history of Medical
Inspection, in which the intimate relation of physical condition and
malnutrition was pointed out.
In 1904 there followed the Report of the Interdepartmental
Committee on Physical Deterioration, which dealt with the wider
question of which the health and physical condition of school
children formed but a part.
In 1905 a Committee was appointed by the President of the
Board of Education to ascertain what was done in respect of medical
inspection of, and the provision of meals to, school children. The
first result was the Education (Provision of Meals) Act of 1906,
and later the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act of 1907
was passed. Under the latter Act, the medical inspection of school
children was inaugurated.