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124 Medical Treatment.
one session per week of the School Oculist's time be
devoted to this work. It would undoubtedly help to
diminish the number of cases of permanently defective
vision, and it must not be forgotten that even in the
case of a child of, say, 10 years with one quarter normal
vision brought up to normal vision by spectacles,
that child has already spent five years of its school life
three-quarters blind.
The Chief Medical Officer to the Board of Education
in his annual report for 1919 says that "prevention rather
than cure is the guiding principle and fundamental purpose
of school medical inspection."
So far as the vision of the school children is concerned,
this ideal can never be attained until the School Oculist
turns his attention to the Infants' Department and examines
the eyes of every infant on commencing school life.
R. P. Garrow.
(g) Ear Disease and Hearing.—Of the 159 cases
of ear disease 56 were treated at the School Clinic, and
103 treated at home under the supervision of private
medical practitioners.
(h) Dental Defects.—The School Dentists devote
four sessions a week to actual treatment of dental
defects and roughly one session to inspection of the
children preliminary to treatment. Mr. Brown takes
one regular session and Mr. Cohen the three other
regular sessions each week, so that roughly three-fourths
of the work is in Mr. Cohen's hands. In the beginning
of the year the group dentally inspected was changed.
Instead of the children 6 to 8 years old coming up for
inspection the "entrants" were dealt with. This change
was made because it was found that a large amount
of dental disease was present in these young children