[Report 1971] / School Medical Officer of Health, Staffordshire County Council.

  • Staffordshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1971
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1971] / School Medical Officer of Health, Staffordshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/124 (page 3)
    medical examination any child who was not obviously full of energy and health. These children were medically examined and most of them allowed free milk. The subject aroused much ill-formed controversy, for a minority—again vocal—would not recognise the established fact that the plump, not the thin, child is the worse off. Indeed malnutrition must be gross to have any effect other than increasing the expectation of life of the child. In 1934, the then Board of Education required the nutrition of children to be classified into groups of excellent, normal, slightly subnormal and bad nutrition and this was continued until 1947. The percentage of children found within the latter category fell to 0.3 and even with this small number doubt existed whether poor nutrition was the only factor. From 1956 two general groups of satisfactory and unsatisfactory have been used but concern now is about the number of fat children. In the recent discussions and reports on the future of the Health Service, the word ‘monitoring’ appears with fashionable frequency. Whether it is required within the clinical field or the general organisation of the hospital or general practitioner fields can be debated, but within the local government health services, including the school health service, monitoring was the original conception of the service and yearly the efficiency and new needs were reviewed in surveying the annual statistics. The criticism of achievements and shortcomings by the Ministry and the County Council Committees has resulted in better progress than would have otherwise been possible. At longer intervals—usually prompted by a retirement— comment is made over a large number of years and besides its intrinsic interest some remarks emerge which may have a value. Somewhat to my surprise I find myself in the same position of retiring in 1972 as were my two predecessors, Dr. Carruthers in 1946 and Dr. Reid in 1922. The Act which initiated the school medical inspection service was passed in 1907, which happened to be the year of my birth. The latter is far from being an important matter in itself, but aptly indicates that the changes have occurred within the life span of one individual—or more accurately within the work span. 3