The Periodic Health Overhaul

The yearly overhaul was conducted by two doctors. The male doctor examined the men, the female doctor, the women and both saw children. As the doctors were not working as clinicians seeking symptoms, but as biologists seeking evidence of health they called themselves "biologists". Moreover, as they were looking for signs of health, these were not medical overhauls, but health overhauls.

The full examination consisted of the following:

Full stripped visual body scan.

Laboratory tests including:

To this would be added the biologists' personal observations on the family as they saw them in the Centre.

The results from the examination were discussed with the family

The meaning of Health

We tend to think of health as a state - indeed, we talk of the "state of one's health". Yet the major finding from the Peckham Experiment was that health is a process. As Innes Pearse wrote:

In the course of our investigation, we have come to define it as "mutual synthesis of organism and environment". This definition implies that in health action is mutually invoked by organism and environment, and emerges in the creative diversification of each. This we saw beginning to happen in Peckham.

Thus, health is more than the mere absence of disease, and study of it must be about growth and development. Indeed, at its extreme, the absence of health is death , which is also the absence of growth.