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disease is prevalent special care is given and extra cleansing
undertaken. Upon the whole this work is efficiently carried
out, the head teachers carefully supervising it.
Height and Weight and the General Nutrition of the
Children.
In considering the "nutrition" of a child, the height and
weight are of great importance. A child may be small, and
yet be well nourished; on the other hand, with fair average
height and weight he may be badly nourished, but generally
speaking, children who are under-sized and below normal
weight present other evidences of defective nutrition. The
ill-nourished child is usually thin and pallid and weakly looking,
often with a dull and apathetic expression. It must be
understood that by the term ill-nourished, it is not necessarily
implied that the child is not given sufficient food, but that
for some reason the organism is not assimilating nourishment
in such a manner as to ensure normal growth and development.
Of the 794 children examined, 25 ( = 3.1 per cent) showed
signs of defective nutrition. These were children exhibiting
no other sign of disease, but who were below the normal standard
of health, and were under weight. The percentage is
approximately the same as last year, and compared with many
districts is very low indeed. In some of the instances I have
been rather of the opinion that the cause was insufficient rest.
As indicated above, the height and weight are very important
guides, both in estimating the "nutrition" and in ascertaining
to what extent improvement is taking place, and
I always like to see the teachers interested on this point. In
children the relation between the three factors—age, height
and weight—is of more importance than merely considering
any two of them, in fact, no proper conclusion can be arrived
at otherwise. Table A will be found of very great interest in
this connection, as side by side with the figures referring to