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corrective work through democratic machinery such as the public
school,--is incalculable. To any teacher, pastor, civic leader, health
official, or taxpayer wanting to take the necessary steps for the
removal of conditions prejudicial to health and for the enforcement of
health rights of child and adult, the best possible advice is to learn
the facts disclosed by the physical examination of your school
children. See that those facts are used first for the benefit of the
children themselves, secondly for the benefit of the community as a
whole. If your school has not yet introduced the thorough physical
examination of school children, take steps at once to secure such
examination. If necessary, volunteer to test the eyes and the breathing
of one class, persuade one or two physicians to cooeperate until you
have proved to parent, taxpayer, health official, and teacher that such
an examination is both a money-saving, energy-saving step and an act of
justice.

We shall have occasion to emphasize over and over again the fact that
it is the use of information and not the gathering of information that
improves the health. The United States Weather Bureau saves millions of
dollars annually, not because flags are raised and bulletins issued
foretelling the weather, but because shipowners, sailors, farmers, and
fruit growers obey the warnings. Mere examination of school children
does little good. The child does not breathe better or see better
because the school physician fills out a card stating that there is
something wrong with his eyes, nose, and tonsils. The examination tells
where the need is, what children should have special attention, what
parents need to be warned as to the condition of the child, what home
conditions need to be corrected. If the facts are not used, that is an
argument not against obtaining facts but against disregarding them.

In understanding medical examination we should keep clearly in mind the
distinction between medical school inspection, medical school
examination, and medical treatment at school. Medical inspection is the
search for communicable disease. The results of medical inspection,
therefore, furnish an index to the presence of communicable diseases in
the community. Medical examination is the search for physical defects,
some of which furnish the soil for contagion. Its results are an index
not only to contagion but to conditions that favor contagion by
producing or aggravatin