[Report 1935] / School Medical Officer of Health, West Sussex County Council.

  • West Sussex (England). County Council.
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1935] / School Medical Officer of Health, West Sussex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/36 (page 5)
    (a) Age groups subjected to routine inspection :— (i) Entrants ; (it) Intermediates ; (in) Leavers. (b) The inspections are conducted in accordance with the Board of Education’s Schedule of Medical Inspect¬ ion. (c) No serious inconvenience to school arrangements was caused by medical inspection. Owing to over¬ crowding it was necessary to use premises other than the School when the children were inspected at the Selsey C.E. Mixed School. 5.—FINDINGS OF MEDICAL INSPECTION.—In Table I., appended, the number of routine inspections at different age- periods is given. With slight variation the numbers of inspections and re-inspections are substantially the same as in previous years. Section C. of this Table shows the number of individual children requiring treatment, excluding malnutrition, uncleanliness and dental diseases. The percentage of children requiring treatment was 12.8, as against 15.7 in 1934 and 14.7 in 1933. The decrease is, of course, mainly due to the fact that, as mentioned in the following paragraph, malnutrition is not now tabulated in Table II. In December, 1934, the Board of Education issued a Mem¬ orandum (No. 124) in connection with the statistical returns re¬ lating to nutrition. The following is a brief summary of the Board’s Memorandum :— The Board have had under consideration the returns of cases of malnutrition supplied by School Medical Officers under the first sub-heading of Table II. As it is desirable that the returns should be classified in a precise and uniform manner, the Board have decided in the returns for 1935 and subsequent years to omit the term “malnutrition” from the list of defects in Table II and to add a separate section class¬ ifying in four categories the degree of nutrition of the child¬ ren examined in the three routine age-groups. The classification is to be made on clinical grounds and not based solely on the height and weight of the child. It is recognised that some variation in the standards adopted by Medical Officers may be unavoidable, but experience appears to show that, generally speaking, a clinical classi¬ fication is more reliable than one based only upon a height- weight-age ratio. The main issue is to estimate the general well-being of the child. Such general assessment cannot as a rule be based upon any single criterion such as any ratio of age, sex, height, and weight, but should also have regard to other data derived from clinical observation ; for example, the general appear¬ ance, facies, carriage, posture ; the condition of the mucous membranes ; the tone and functioning of the muscular system;