DR. DAVID FORSYTE'S PAPER 127 



THE MEDICAL INSPECTION 



OF INFANTS AND CHILDREN 



UNDER SCHOOL AGE. 



BY DAVID FORSYTH, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.P. 



Phys'cian to the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children ; Physician to Out-patients, Charing 



Cross Hospital. 



A SIGNIFICANT fact bearino- on the health of 



o 



children, though hitherto hardly appreciated beside the 

 more conspicuous facts relating to infant mortality, is 

 now beginning to claim attention. I refer to the wide- 

 spread physical deterioration that overtakes children 

 during the first four or five years of life. This fact 

 is well established by the medical inspection of 

 elementary school children, the majority of whom 

 prove to be physically unsound, most of their defects, 

 moreover, being preventible. Clearly, therefore, it 

 is to these earlier years before schooling begins that 

 attention must be turned if this deterioration is to be 

 averted. The conditions cannot be adequately met 

 by postponing action until the children reach the 

 minimum school age, by which time much suffering 

 and not a little permanent damage will have been 

 inflicted. What is needed is some form of medical 

 supervision, together with facilities for remedial 

 treatment, extending over the whole of the first 

 lustrum. 



But with this problem only now unfolding itself, 

 little or nothing has been done as yet by way of 

 a solution. True, there are infant consultations in 

 many parts of the country, but these, owing their 

 inception to the movement against infant mortality, 

 are concerned only with infants under one year. 

 Since, however, as will be seen below, it is not until 

 the second year at earliest that the physical defects 

 of the future school entrants show themselves in any 



