Bringing up the normal child / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.

Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bringing up the normal child / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the individual. Perhaps it seems incomprehensible to you that a fright experienced by your child at the age of two or three years can be instrumental in de- termining the complexion of mind of that child after it has come to adult age — can for example give it a life-long inherent timidity that will dom- inate it under given conditions. Such, however, is the fact; and a clear recognition by every parent of this elementary truth would mark a new era in the treatment of the child, and in the social progress of humanity in general. Says the Italian physiologist Mosso: “Every ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like a minute splinter in the flesh, to torture him all his life long.” Dr. Barker, in quoting this statement with approval, points out that “in Greece and Rome the children were frightened with the lamias or female demons who would charm them and suck their blood; with the one-eyed Cyclops or with a black god, Mer- cury, who would come to carry them away.” And he adds: “This very pernicious error in education still prevails. The mother, the nurse, the maid, and the servants still frighten the child with tales of the bogeyman, of goblins, of ogres, of wizards, and of witches. “Such treatment not only makes life a burden [12]
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