ARGUMENT FOR MEDICAL INSPECTION 



courses, higher standards, and constantly more insistent demands 

 for intellectual attainment, conditions have changed. Pupils 

 have been unable to keep up with their classes. The terms " back- 

 ward," "retarded," and "exceptional," as applied to school chil- 

 dren, have been added to the vocabularies of school men. 



School men discovered that the drag-net of compulsory 

 education was bringing into school hundreds of children who 

 were unable to keep step with their companions, and because 

 this interfered with the ordinary administration of our school/ 

 systems they began to ask why the children were backward. 



The school physicians helped to find the answer when they 

 showed that hundreds of these children were backward simply 

 because of removable physical defects. And then came the 

 next great forward step, the realization that children are not 

 dullards through the will of an inscrutable Providence, but rather 

 through the law of cause and effect. 



This led to an extension of the scope of medical inspection 

 to include the physical examination of school children with the 

 aim of discovering whether or not they were suffering from such 

 defects as would handicap their educational progress and prevent 

 them from receiving the full benefit of the free education furnished 

 by the state. This work was in its infancy five years ago, but 

 today more than 200 American cities have systems of physical 

 examination of their school children. 



Surprising numbers of children have been found who, through 

 defective eyesight, have been seriously handicapped in their 

 school work. Many are found to have defective hearing. Other 

 conditions are found which have a great and formerly unrecognized 

 influence on the welfare, happiness, and mental vigor of the child. 

 Attention has been directed to the real significance of adenoids 

 and enlarged tonsils, of swollen glands and carious teeth. 



Communities are seeing the whole matter in a new light. 

 Gradually they are beginning to ask, not whether they can afford 

 to take steps to safeguard in schools the welfare of their children, 

 but whether they can afford not to take such steps. The realiza- 

 tion is dawning that it is unbusinesslike to count carefully the 

 cost of the school physician, but to disregard the cost of death and 

 disease, of wrecked hopes and dependent families. 



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