Progressive Medicine (Volume 1); A Quarterly Digest of Advances, Discoveries, and Improvements in the Medical and Surgical Sciences (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DISEASES OF CHILDREN. By FLOYD M. CRANDALL, M.D. The pediatric literature of the past year has apparently been about the same in amount as that of recent previous years, but no strong drift is to be noted in any particular direction. In an extended address given at the Harvard Medical School, Rotch1 presents an admirable review of disease and the prevention of disease in early life. He considers first those congenital conditions which are to be prevented by the treatment of parents rather than the child, but draws attention to the importance of recognizing the probable occurrence of these conditions and combating them in the infant from its earliest days. He then turns his attention to the acquired diseases, certain of which may result from the mismanagement of a normal infant. Those who care for infants may ignorantly produce disease by forcing the functions of an early period of development to undertake the duties of a later period, and by overtaxing undeveloped functions. This may result from too prolonged confinement in school and forcing an undeveloped brain to assume a grade of study beyond its normal capacity. The reverse of this is seen where the functions are not brought into use when ready to be used and may thus be called disease arising from unwise and ignorant caution. As examples of this class may be mentioned: (1) Fear on the part of the caretaker to allow the infant to use its legs when they are ready and ought to be used; (2) overprotection from cool, fresh air in the nursery and sleeping-room; (3) keeping in the house too much; (4) keeping from becoming accustomed to seeing people and to a moderate amount of sound; (5) keeping on with breast milk, or with a properly modified cow's milk, after about the twelfth month, a time when, normally, other food is ...