Children's diseases : first report of the Clinical Hospital for Diseases of Children, Stevenson Square, Manchester : containing an account of the results of the first 530 patients there treated / by A. Schoepf Merei and J. Whitehead.

  • Schoepf Merei, Agost, 1804-1858.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Children's diseases : first report of the Clinical Hospital for Diseases of Children, Stevenson Square, Manchester : containing an account of the results of the first 530 patients there treated / by A. Schoepf Merei and J. Whitehead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT ; MANIFESTATIONS OF ITS FAVOURABLE AND UNFAVOURABLE CONDITION. Entertaining the conviction that a large number of the dis- eases of infants arise from a faulty condition of development, and that these diseases may, by proper hygienic measures, more generally than others, be prevented or improved, we are carry- ing on investigations with a view to ascertain, by an accumu- lation of facts, the manifestations and signs of the favourable and unfavourable developmental process of children in general, and the proportions in Avhich they occur among the children of the working classes, with the nature and relative gravity of the causes of disordered development: only after a clear settlement of these points will it be possible to devise suitable means for their prevention and improvement. In order to arrive at the results alluded to, we have esta- blished for every patient the same scheme of investigation, consisting in the tilling with answers the following series of questions: as to age, size and habit of body, kind of com- plexion, dimensions and shape of the head and chest, state of the anterior fontanelle, period at which the first teeth ap- peared, actual number of teeth, period at which the last of the twenty teeth were cut, period of the commencement of walking, whether, at what age, and by what cause the progress of deve- lopment has been checked, actual condition of development, whether and how long the child has had the milk of the breast alone, and whether that milk was abundant or scanty, or given conjointly with food, and what kind of food, the physical and sanitary characteristics of the mother, whether she could attend to her child fully, or was obliged to go out to work, period of weaning, kind of food after weaning, and some other points of interest, having relation to development, noted down just as they presented themselves. We have not as yet at our command observations suffi- ciently numerous on all these points to enable us to draw con- clusions so well founded in every particular as we wish them to be. We shall, therefore, give on this occasion only such
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