“There can be no doubt, said the British Medical Journal, in a leading article last year, “but that this newer knowledge of nutrition has placed in the hands of our profession a potent weapon against disease –a potent instrument in the promotion of physical efficiency and well-being. It behoves us, therefore, to become proficient in this knowledge, to apply it in the daily course of our work, and to spread it by every means in our power. A special responsibility attaches to our medical schools in this respect.”
“At present medical students during the early years of their course are given a few lectures and demonstrations dealing with the physiology of nutrition, and perhaps carry out a little laboratory work in this field; the subject is presented as a chapter of physiology, and not as an integral part of preventive medicine”.
The next most important direction in which educational effort is required is in the teaching of the elements of nutrition to school children:”We spend million,” said Lord Bledisloe in a letter to The Times, [ November 6th, 1935.] “on feeding the minds of the youth of the nation. Is it not time that we spent a little (as an essential part of all school curricula) on showing those young people how rationally and sensibly to feed their bodies and those of their prospective progeny?”
Here he goes to the root of the matter, for it is only by the instruction of youth that the faulty food habits of the people can ultimately be altered and the desire created for those things that be good from the nutritional point of view. This desire will lead to the demand for them, may be translated into the greater production of them and, perhaps, lead also to the return of many more people to the land — a thing greatly to be desired.
But to teach the children the teachers must themselves be taught, and this requires the adequate provision in all training colleges for prospective entrants into the scholastic profession of facilities for the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of the subject. These facilities do not, so far as I can learn, now exist, is an urgent matter. It “should set the Board of Education thinking more deeply on a question which vitally affects our national physique”.
