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Introduction.
Much careful thought and study has been devoted by
the school hygienist in order to put into practice the
purpose and design of the School Medical Service as
outlined in the Education enactments of recent years.
Briefly the plan of work has been to discover any defect
in the child, to facilitate its treatment, and to ensure that
the child is physically fit to receive full benefit from the
education provided, so that on entry into national life
it shall be in possession of the best possible physical
equipment.
It is not to be expected that a yearly report on the
School Medical Service is much more than a statistical
return of the defects discovered and treated during that
year, and a repetition of the summary of the various
branches of the School Medical Service. It should not be
taken as a report showing physical improvement or
retardation of the school child during the year under
review. Anyone, however, who may feel inclined to
criticise the effects of the service cannot but be impressed
with the vastly improved environment of the elementary
school, the greater happiness and alertness of the
children, and, taken as a whole, greater healthiness and
higher standard of nutrition. Whilst much of this is due
to better educational facilities and improved home
environment, some credit must be given to the effect of a
continuous school medical service. I am myself convinced
that the stature and nurture of the elementary school child
has definitely improved over the past fifteen years, but
on the other hand one meets much more frequently the
child with a functional neurosis, due to the hurried stress
of modern life.
In recent years much has been said about the neglect
of the child between the ages of two and five years, and
that it generally escapes the supervision which the child
under one year of age receives at the maternity and child
welfare centres. We have, however, in Bromley for some
years past provided facilities for such children to receive
treatment through the School Medical Service special
services. We have also endeavoured to make a routine
medical examination of the four year old child before its