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36
Three sessions are held weekly—one at the Old Town Hall, Woolwich, one
at Plumstead Health Centre, and one at Eltham Health Centre. These sessions
are under the medical charge of Dr. Margaret Emslie, and she reports below on the
year's working. In the year under review a slight extension of the service has
taken place in that two or three toddlers are so examined each morning session at
New Eltham by one of the Assistant Medical Officers.
Dr. Emslie's report follows:—
"The total number of full inspections is increased this year (1314 as compared
with 1,145 in 1934 and 1,105 in 1933), and 505 additional attendances
were made as re-inspections.
Once more the figures for the nutrition of the children are satisfactory
in themselves and show a continuance of the improvement gradually making
itself felt in previous years. 61 per cent. were marked as of excellent nutrition;
28 percent. of good, or normal, as compared with 53 per cent. and 35.5 percent.
in 1934, and 42 per cent. and 41 per cent. in 1933, the trend obviously being
towards the higher standard. The rate for subnormal nutrition has declined
in a corresponding manner from 16 per cent. in 1933 and 11 per cent. in 1934
to 10 per cent. this year, and for serious malnutrition the figures are almost
too small to show as a percentage (0.2 per cent.). Admitting the essential
weakness of such computations as evidence, and the fallibility of external
observations only, the tendency towards improvement noted since the first
inspections were made is nevertheless consistent and worthy of remark.
Anaemia and rickets as accessory conditions relating to the nutritional
state both show improvement on the figures previously noted. Anaemia (as
assessed clinically) has declined from 17 per cent. (1933) and 21 per cent.
(1934) to 14 per cent. and rickets from 30 per cent. (1933 and 1934) to 18 per
cent., the first yielding shown in this figure since the clinic started. It is to
be hoped the decline is of some significance and may mark the starting point
of a falling curve.
Passing to certain special symptoms that have received attention in
previous reports, the figure for 'behaviour symptoms' amounts this year to
the equivalent of 18 per cent. of the total children examined. But this is a
total of symptoms, not of children, and more than one symptom was undoubtedly
noted in a number of children and sometimes several such evidences of disturbance.
For the assessing of disturbed children it would indeed be odd to
assume anything less than the presence of a number of disturbed symptoms,
viewed and assessed in relation to each other. Each one of these, however,