REPLIES TO MEDICAL INQUIRIES.
For many years past it has been incumbent upon all candidates seeking
employment in the Post-office, as in other public departments, to
undergo medical examination, with the view of securing healthy persons
for the service; and in the course of such examinations the medical
officer requires to make inquiry into the state of health of the
candidates' parents, brothers, sisters, &c., the information being
elicited in forms to be filled up by the candidates. Though it is not to
be expected that persons entering as postmen, messengers, and so on,
should exhibit perfection in their orthography, still, in referring to
the more common troubles that afflict the human frame, some approach to
an intelligible description of diseases might be hoped for. Dr Lewis,
who held the post of medical officer in the General Post-office, London,
for many years, recorded the following examples of answers received to
his questions:--
"Father had sunstroke, and I caught it of him." "My little brother died
of some funny name." "A great white cat drawed my sister's breath, and
she died of it." A parent died of "Apperplexity"; another died of
"Parasles." One "caught Tiber fever in the Hackney Road"; another had
had "goarnders"; a third "burralger in the head." Some of the other
complaints were described as "rummitanic pains," "carracatic fever,"
"indigestion of the lungs," "toncertina in the throat," "pistoles on the
back." One candidate stated that "his sister was consumpted, now she's
quite well again"; while the sister of another was stated to have "died
of compulsion."
It is to be hoped that the work of the school boards will be seen in the
absence of such answers from the medical officers' schedules of the
future.
In addition to the medical scrutiny as to health, all candidates for
service have to give satisfactory accounts in regard to their previous
employment; and this is elicited by means of questions put to the
candidate on what is known as the A. form.
The following are questions and answers in the case of a young lady
candidate:--
Write your Christian and surname in full.
Elizabeth B----
Your usual signature?
Yours ever, Lizzie.
State how you have been employed since leaving school.
_Ans_. Music and singing, and nursing dear mamma,
who is an invalid!