Regretted having started :-(

Nobody ever *needs* one.

Yes, but it is poor at dissolving calcium as calcium phosphate is not soluble. If it were, our skeletons would dissolve inside us.

If I live anothwer thirty years I'll make nearly 110...

Well, sweets came off ration around 1953 IIRC, and I didn't scoff a lot of them, though I *did* have room for a Wagon Wheel quite often - and then, they really were a lot biggerer. And thickerer.

Some people's backbones excepted?

My class photograph from top juniors shows 30 kids (and the teacher and class assistant) all as skinny as a rakes, and there were very few who wore glasses and none at all with a hearing aid or an allergy.

I still love wagon wheels .....

...and five boys.....not all at the same time you understand

Not wearing glasses or using a hearing aid could easily be due to problems not being spotted. Even today, it is surprising how often pupils can't see the whiteboard or have hearing problems and it has gone unnoticed for sometime.

Neither are related to sweats being on/off ration etc.

That is very true. Screening was not so widespread, and the expectation of being able to afford such aids was not widespread in poorer areas, despite the NHS just beginning to make these things available much more widely. No-one noticed I couldn't read a blackboard until I was 12, except me, and I assumed no-one else could either

Spike will, of course, have another 'expert' view which he will inform us of and claim he was consulted on by the government. ;-)

It is truly amazing to think our various governments have been using a (retired) postman as a consultant on a whole range of matters for decade after decade.

;-)

Allergies are even easier to 'spot', just like being overweight, but no-one had an allergy and no-one was over-weight.

So the teacher would write something on the blackboard for the class to copy into their workbooks, but as you couldn't see the blackboard you wouldn't have copied much - and no-one picked this up in ~7 years?

You forgot 'allergies'.

Are you drowning in your own sweat?

You didn't mention those in your 'photo' post, you mentioned glasses and hearing aids.

No one has questioned the way allergies and weight have become a 'modern' problem. To anyone with an iota of common sense it is obvious.

In 'working class homes', at least in the north, youngsters would live in houses without central heating, probably heated by coal fires, have a cooked school lunch ('meat and two veg') and a cooked evening meal. Obesity was, at least, very uncommon, but probably not unknown. Asthma- I recall one boy who suffered from it in junior school, he also had a hearing aid and glasses. Without being unkind, he was the statistically unlucky one.

Too hot to do much at all. I've even skipped my walk- most unusual.

I had problems in primary but nobody helped ..... I blame band 1 Tv for an eye squint .....

I wore specs from ared 14 - that's 1954. We had one girl in our year who had a hearing aid, and I have no reason to know about allergies elseset, but from 13 I was egg-intolerant.

I still am unable to eat (say) a boiled, fried, scrambled etc egg without being demonstrably ill.

Screening was not so widespread, and the expectation

My mother (typically) said "There's nothing the matter with your eyesight, but I'll arrange for you to see Dr. Zwinck."

While she was treating (with shortwave diathermy) Philip (Russell Read), the pharacist at whose premises the tests took place, she asked him about my need for glasses.

"Oh yes," he replied: "he does, and rather badly."

I've worn spectacles ever since then. (1954)

How?

We had two pupils in our class who were overweight as I unforget. Neither was grossly so, and I can't think of anyone in the school (640 pupils) who was really grossly obese.

So, how do you spot an allergy?

If you're one eminent senior consultant, not at all. The exact words used were "I'm afraid the NHS can do nothing for your daughter".

This chap was annoyed because I'd refused to let him carry out a procedure. I had my (scientific) reasons and I'd told him what they were. He couldn't upstage them, so in a disgraceful act, we got dumped.

Unfortunately. he said this in front of his trainees, and not being the sort of person to let something like this pass, I replied that in a few years a new technique will be developed that carries none of the risks of the current one, and when that happens we'll take advantage of it. He'd never heard of this, of course, not being a scientist - I'd used the scientific name - and so he flounced out followed by his juniors. I hope the lesson they learned that day was that no matter how senior, a doctor can be, and sometimes is, ignorant of the issue at hand.

We were left to our own devices, and it took some time before we were, quite accidentally, given the name of another senior paediatrician. Being younger and trained in modern techniques, she diagnosed my daughter while she was still walking through the door. Unfortunately, this lady wanted to perform the same procedure as the previous consultant, but I deployed the same arguments as I'd used then, and she admitted later that I was the only one of her patients that had ever managed to avoid it. Eventually, we took our daughter to a senior paediatrician who was one of that very rare breed that look at the whole patient, and under whose care my daughter made significant improvements.

The elderly senior consultant had stooped to using emotional blackmail, such as "Your daughter won't thank you for this when she's sixteen!", to which I answered that it was my duty as a father to do the best for her, and should the worst happen in later years as a result of this procedure, he wouldn't be there to pick up the pieces.

Keep in mind that doctors see medical conditions as being caused by a lack of medication, much of it being harmful. The one thing they don't seem to be trained for is to treat a patient as a whole.

Since the age of 6 here, not long after the NHS came into being.