This relationship has not been carefully thought out in the past, and co-operation between medicals and educationalists is, we fancy, somewhat rare.

Few men could tell us exactly what policy is followed, or ought to be followed.

This is partly due to that confusion of purpose of which we spoke in the first chapter, a confusion which obscures and confounds our medical and educational missions.

If both medical and educational missions had had one common dominant purpose, the relation between them would have been more easily seen; but since they were separated in thought, each having its own particular and separate objects to pursue, they naturally worked along parallel lines and consequently did not meet.

If they had had one common dominant object they would have met.
But generally speaking there is no clear understanding whether the medical mission has any definite relation to the educational mission, or the educational mission to the medical.
On the medical side, it is not clearly understood whether it is the first duty, or the last duty, of medicals to attend to the children whom we gather together in such large numbers, whether the medicals ought to inspect all the children, whether they ought to be at hand to treat children who are obviously sick, whether these considerations ought to influence the location of the hospital, or of the place of residence of the medical missionaries, or whether this work, if they really gave much time to it, should be considered as withdrawing them from their _proper_ work.