Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/222

 or on the sickly or abnormal children. They might, or might not, according to the desire of parents, be permitted to give treatment. They might take steps to prevent the spread of infection, and there is no child ailment which they might not, if they willed, specialize on, in so far as observation is concerned. The door would thus be opened to many, and that, at first, is all that is wanted. Many would enter, and every one would reveal himself, more or less. Their work might cost as much or as little as the parents willed. It might cost the merest trifle, as in many German villages. It should be open to them, as ratepayers, to extend it or to restrict it. But since parents are obliged to send their children to school, and since they have to take risks in doing so, the schools should be made, in so far as is possible, safe places. Therefore it is right that some degree of medical inspection of all elementary schools should be compulsory.

If once this was admitted, and if all schools had some kind and degree of medical inspection, then from every part of the country Medical Reports of some kind or another would begin to pour in at the head office of the Board of Education. Perhaps some of these Reports would come from men who, from the first, aspired to be genuine inspectors of