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LABOUR AND CHILDHOOD

show strangers what health is! In any case, the school doctor was never regarded by them as a mere inspector of buildings and detector of infectious disease. From the very beginning—that is to say, from the year 1896—he was given the task of discovering the bodily and mental condition of every child entering school. But what is more, this new knowledge was made the basis of the future training and teaching provided for the children. Thus Wiesbaden inaugurated a new epoch in elementary education. So tactfully and yet so boldly was the new work begun and carried on that within a year some of the large cities began to form their system of medical inspection on the plan furnished by Wiesbaden. But, what is more wonderful, Germany, which had been, up till the time that Wiesbaden took action, very doubtful and slow in developing any system at all of medical school inspection, now started forward like a man whose eyes have been suddenly opened, and made rapid progress. In a few years many hundreds of school doctors were engaged. They number now in all between six and seven hundred! And through the length and breadth of the Fatherland, Wiesbaden's methods have become more or less the classic of these doctors. Some have improved on them in certain