Though, indirectly, the schools of the Board were having considerable effect upon the physical well-being of the rising generation, it cannot be said that the School Board had utilised its vast opportunities for improving the general health. By instruction, by influence, it might have done so much, might have moulded the physical future of generations. But education was always much more in the minds of the Board than health, though the two might well have been considered together, and without health education is of little use. The Board in their "Final Report" endeavoured to offer an explanation of their inaction. "It has always been a question how far the Board are authorised to spend public money on the medical care of children. On the one hand suggestions have been made for the inspection of their teeth, and the treatment of cases of anæmic condition and arrested development. On the other hand a legal opinion has been expressed that the Board are not entitled to do anything, or to take any measures except such as spring from the fact that the attendance of the children is compulsory. On this account it has been thought right to take action only in those cases in which on account of contagious disease, it is necessary to exclude children from school."[186] Even the sanitary condition of the schools does not appear to have been well looked after. In January, 1890, one of the Committees submitted a report to the Board, on which the resolution was passed-- "That the Committee be authorised to thoroughly examine the whole of the drainage of any school of the Board where they may think it necessary," &c. The drainage was subsequently examined. In 181 schools the drainage was all right. In 292 of the schools re-drainage was required. For how long that fertile source of disease had been scattering its evil germs among the tens of thousands of children attending these insanitary schools, no information is available. In 1890, just twenty years after its formation, the Board appointed a Medical Officer, and he gave only a portion of his time to the work. "Before 1891 there was no attempt on the part of the Board to prevent the spread of infectious diseases by precautionary measures being adopted in the school."[187] In 1895 the Medical Officer of Health for Paddington wrote:-- "School teachers should be required to inform the Sanitary Authority of any special amount of illness which may occur among the scholars. Half a school may be away through sickness if the disease be not a notified one, but no information of such fact comes to the Sanitary Authority." And in 1896 he wrote:-- "The past year had emphasised the need of definite instructions to school teachers to keep the Medical Officers of Health informed of the existence of infectious disease among their pupils. It is surmised that there were upwards of 2,000 cases of measles in the parish in the earlier part of the year." And "measles is the most fatal disease of childhood."