[Report 1952] / School Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow.

  • Glasgow (Scotland)
Date:
1952
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1952] / School Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/96 (page 4)
    GENERAL INTRODUCTION This REPORT is the forty-third since the establishment of medical inspection in Glasgow in the year 1909, the twenty-second since the transfer to the Health Department in 1930, and the fourteenth since the form of report was recast following the introduction throughout the country of a uniform method of recording at the request of the Department of Health for Scotland. The session was one which, in retrospect, can be viewed with a certain degree of satisfaction. Despite the almost inevitable fluctuations of staff, the general scheme of work proceeded without major inter- ruption, the planned programme being completed within the period. It was also found possible to effect some reorganisation of effort in respect of various activities directly, or indirectly, connected with the School Health Service. School medical officers devoted more time than in the previous year to the basic work of systematic inspection and treatment. More periods were also spent on certain other duties, notably those relating to the examination of children for residential schools and school camps, the general inspection of schools (including the sanitary arrangements therein) and the examination of pre-vocational students and school meals’ service employees. In the course of routine medical inspection, school medical officers examined 51,349 pupils attending “ordinary” schools—the largest number previously seen in any one year since 1938. The phenomenal increase was due mainly to the influx of five-year-old children. The results of routine inspection were gratifying. In respect of most defect groups, fewer children were found to be suffering from one or other of the listed ailments and 42-8 per cent, of all pupils examined were recorded as having no defect of any kind—a percentage which was the highest ever recorded in these Reports. Moreover, of those with any disease, fewer than ever before were discovered with the less remediable type of malady. Average measurements also showed general improvement, only the weights of the five-year-olds (particularly of the girls) failing to conform to pattern. As evidence of the improved physique of the Glasgow school child in the post-war years, the increases