With Mr. Tennant's amendment in favour of compulsory medical inspection
for children we are in the fullest agree_ ment, in spite of the fact that it will add a new charge to the rates. Anything that makes for improving the health of the population is to be welcomed. Care must be taken, however, that the inspection shall not be of a perfunctory kind, but shall really discover the children's weak places medically, and still more surgically. It is not too much to say that the country is filled with men and women with bodily defects which could have been, and ought to have been, detected in childhood, and which, if detected, could have been cured. Since, however, they passed undetected, their victims are often hopelessly handicapped in the struggle for life. Mr. Birrell's proposal to make use of the Queen's nurses and district nurses as supplementary agencies was a good one, but we hold that the first inspection should be by qualified medical men and should be of a very thorough character.
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