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the hospitals undertake this work, and the general
practitioners place their services in this direction, cases
of acute illness will attend the School Clinic. It must
be clearly understood that no case requiring domiciliary
treatment is treated at the Clinic, all such cases being
referred to their own doctor. The parents appreciate
this fact, and act ou the principle that early treatment
is both economical and effective. It is the experience
of those working at the Clinic that abuse of the service
offered by the Local Authority does not exist beyond an
occasional attempt to use the Clinic as an excuse for
non-attendance at school.
The 1,825 individual children attending the medical
inspection clinic in 1931 suffered from 4,371 defects,
an average of over two defects per child. These children
made 5,356 attendances. These figures may be compared
with the routine examination of the child attending
school when the total defects discovered numbered 905,
or less than one defect per child examined.
Children found to be suffering from minor ailments
not requiring domiciliary treatment are passed to the
treatment clinic, where they are treated under the skilled
care of the school nurses. It is not generally understood
by the public that the nurses employed by the Local
Authority are not only general hospital trained, but have
obtained the highest qualifications in their profession.
A reference to Table IV., Group I., will show the
number treated by the nurses during 1931.
The majority of complaints treated are skin diseases
and minor injuries. Chronic otitis media cases amounted
to 146, and being peculiarly resistant to treatment occupy
a large proportion of the nurses' time. Most cases
improve under the acriflavine routine, generally without
impairment of hearing, but others, approximately 30
per cent., are recurrent and require the more radical
surgical treatment, such as complete mastoid operation.
Orthopaedic Clinic.
The Orthopaedic Clinic has now been established
nearly six years and continues to be used to its full
capacity. The type of case is now of a less severe kind,