Physical Training.

(7) The conservation of health. Always an object, but more
particularly so in the middle and later life.

THE MEDICAL EXAMINATION

In the American college of today, the student's first contact with the
Department of Physical Training is very likely to be in the examining
room. In the College of the City of New York[12] it has become the
established custom to require a satisfactory health examination before
admitting the applicant to registration as a student in the college.
Entering classes are enrolled in this institution at the beginning of
each term, and in each list of applicants there are always a few to
whom admission is denied because of unsatisfactory health conditions.

In each case in which admission is denied because of unsatisfactory
health, the individual is given careful advice relative to his present
and probable future condition, and every effort is made to help the
applicant plan his life so that he may be able at a later time to
enter the college. Of course, it occasionally happens that applicants
are found with serious and incurable health defects which make it very
improbable that they will ever be in condition to attempt a college
education.

=Scope of health examination=

The health examination of the student should cover those facts in his
family and personal health history that are likely to have a bearing
upon his present or future health, and the examination should include
a very careful investigation of the important organs of his body. This
examination calls for expert medical and dental service.

=How to conduct health examination=

The most useful examiner is he who is at the same time a teacher.
Nowhere else is a better or even an equally good opportunity given to
drive home impressively, and sometimes dramatically, important lessons
in individual hygiene. Through a pair of experimental lenses placed by
his examiner before his hitherto undiscovered visual brain cells, the
young student who has had poor vision and has never known it, may
obtain, for the first time, a glimpse of the beauty in his
surroundings.

The dental examiner who finds bad teeth and explains bad teeth to the
student whose health is being, or may be, destroyed by such teeth, has
before him all the elements necessary for very effective health
instruction.

The health examination should be a personal and private affair. It is
often best not to have even a recorder present. T