202 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vo.. VIII. 
Knowledge will be acquired without loss of elasticity in mind or of wasting 
in body; the lesson will then have been learned and acted upon, that 
‘“‘the physical equilibrium is essential to the highest organization of 
character.” 
To sum up, medical inspection will materially help the’ improvement 
and education of this young nation of Canada. The child when he comes 
under the influence of the school law, “‘has already lived through a long 
and adventurous history. He is born of parents of a given race, of a 
given community, themselves featured and developed by incalculable 
perplexities of influence. He has inherited certain predispositions of his 
parents. He may have been affected by parental diseases. He may 
have suffered in his life before birth. He has through many critical 
moments struggled into individual existence. He has survived all the 
serious vicissitudes of his first week, his first month, his first year, his 
first five years. He has learned to walk, to talk, to assert his place in the 
mimic community of children. He has acquired individual habits. He 
has laid the basis of morals. He has come to some sense of individuality 
in the family. He has even acquired the rudiments of citizenship. He 
has at last made the great transition from the home to the school, from 
his cradle community to the community of strangers, from the soft nur- 
ture of family sentiment to the realities of discipline. At every stage 
in his history he has acquired something that his whole life will not ex- 
tirpate. He has been touched with some diseases that make him safe 
against them forever. He has found his organs fit enough to carry him 
thus far. He is now about to enter a much vaster struggle, a more re- 
morseless ordeal, a life full of greater stresses, energies and dangers.” 
One too which he is forced into by the state. Is it not therefore import- 
ant and essential for the state to search out the pre-school life influences, 
and to study their bearings on the modifications it is necessary to make 
in the course of study of each particular child, and the educational system 
culminates in the production of the state evolved man or woman, upon 
whose completeness devolves the growth of the people as a nation? 
What then are the principles that should be adopted in a system 
of medical inspection, one applicable to this province? This is a ques- 
tion which I think should be considered by a special committee or com- 
mission appointed by the Government for the purpose, and the personnel 
of which should be representative of both the teaching and medical pro- 
fessions, which committee or commission should report at an early date. 
My opinion is, that the system should be under the control of the health 
anthorities and be conducted by medical men acting along definite lines; 
the immediate object being to ascertain the fitness or otherwise of each 
