_The Medical Profession._--The most important task of child-protection is the protection of children’s health. The persons who should undertake the management of this department are those who possess the requisite expert knowledge in matters of health--that is to say, medical practitioners and specialists in the diseases of children. In most branches of child-protection, medical practitioners now play an important part. It rests with them to determine whether there does or does not exist a contra-indication to marriage. They have to render assistance before and during childbirth, they are the most important instruments for the protection of infants and for the care of foundlings and illegitimate children, and as consultants and administrators they exercise important activities in the domain of child-labour. Their part in other subdivisions of child-protection will be discussed in detail in a later chapter of this work. The importance of the work of medical practitioners continually increases. The tendency in almost all departments of child-protection is to arrange for a preliminary examination of the children by the doctor. Among the various reasons for such an examination, we may mention that in the case of uncontrollable children and juvenile criminals the doctor can make a thorough examination of the child’s physical and mental condition, and upon this examination he will base a decision, whether the child should be placed in family or institutional care, in a reformatory school, or in some other specialised institution--as, for example, a home for mentally abnormal children; further, it is the doctor’s duty to examine all children, before they begin to work for a living, as to their physical fitness, and upon the results of this examination to base an opinion whether the child is fit to earn its living at all, and if so, whether the trade selected by the relatives is a suitable one. The tendency is, further, that the doctor should give an opinion regarding the method of protection suited for the particular child. Quite recently, indeed, the desire has been widely and strongly expressed that all children should be subjected to continuous and appropriate medical control. The institution of school physicians, supplemented in recent days by medical control of the domestic environment of the school children, shows clearly that such medical supervision of all children is likely in time to become universal. In addition, we owe a great deal to the doctors in connection with the literature of child-protection. The ablest and most important works in this specialty are by physicians. In several handbooks of hygiene, most of the problems of child-protection receive attention, although the matter is not always treated very systematically. The enormous influence which medical science has exercised and continues to exercise upon the development of the individual branches of child-protection will become apparent in the Special Part of this work.