But English city life is another story. In the great industrial centres the school doctor's advice was very often flung away. We know now that more than half of all the children are in such a condition that advice should be given about them to their parents! But in the poorer schools only 3 per cent of the children needing spectacles get them. Of the 30 per cent of all the children who have adenoids, of the 8 per cent even who have this distressing ailment in a very acute form, the school doctor may have inspected a great number; but how many even of these have received treatment? And of these, how many are cured? It is well known that these cases are often tedious, and parents cannot spare the time to go often to hospital. A large number cannot, or do not even go once after being warned. "He will grow out of it," they say of the sufferer. So the case is neglected, and the patient becomes in many cases deaf for life. Well, the school doctor cannot at present do anything—it is his business to note the evil, and then to leave everything to take its course—and hurry on to the next school.
For sixteen years the few men engaged in this work have known the limits of their powers so well that, almost unconsciously perhaps, they began to think of other matters than treatment. They looked,
