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iv.
In the first place it must be remembered that the terms of reference
drawn up by the President of the Board of Education, instructed the Committee
to ascertain and report ou what is now being done and with what
result in respect of Medical Inspection, and that it was no part of the
duty of the members of the Committee to express any opinion, or make
any recommendations. The Report in consequence is essentially a statement
of fact. Any central action that may be taken on it remains for the Board
of Education itself, and I think that it needs no special gift of foresight to
believe that in all probabilty it will become at no far distant date the recognised
duty of all local education authorities to make provision for the physical
as well as the mental well-being of the children uoder their charge.
The Report makes it quite clear that education authorities have the
power to appoint and pay Medical Officers, (Vol. 1, page 2, par. 6.) and this
disposes of one of the points urged agaiust such an appointment here.
In speaking of this Report, which really consists of two parts (1) that
dealing with the medical inspection of school children, and (2) with the
feeding of them, I refer only to the first With the second part I am not
now concerned, though I do not in the least undervalue its importance.
After reading the Report, I think any open-minded person cannot fail
to be impressed by several rather striking general conclusions.
One is the success that has attended nearly all the attempts made by
various authorities to deal with the physical condition of the children by instituting
medical inspection, and this in spite of the fact that the large majority
of them were simply experimental, and had only been in operation a comparatively
short time when the Report was issued.
Another point, and in my opinion the most important in the whole Report,
is that diagnosis, not treatment, is the function of the School Medical Officer.
It is brought out over and over again in the Report, and is summed up
clearly in the following statement : The existence of the defect or ailment
is discovered, and the parent is notified of the fact. It is his duty to take
steps to get the necessary remedy applied." (Vol. 1, page 3, par. 11). I
should like you to take special note of this point, because one of the strongest
arguments urged against the appointment of a Medical Officer for our Schools
was the belief that it was no good dissovering defects unless the education