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 CHAPTER XI

THE SCHOOL DOCTOR AT HOME

HE British school doctor exists, but so small is the number of men appointed to this post (they hardly number as yet fifty), and so greatly do the amount and nature of their work vary, that at present the phrase "school doctor" has no very clear meaning to many. Moreover, a great many people think that even if school children are examined, there need be no school doctor—that a medical officer of health will do quite well for this kind of work. It is clear that the British school doctor is hardly even a new arrival. He is a person who is being quarrelled over on the doorstep!

Not but that he has been allowed to look in and even to make a hurried round. In London the school doctor enters a school, looks, listens, examines some children, even weighs and measures a few; but he does not return as the Wiesbaden doctor returns, in a fortnight. He fares forth over a great wilderness, disappears like a cloud, and is perhaps seen 182