The new parent's assistant / by Stephen Paget.

  • Stephen Paget
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The new parent's assistant / by Stephen Paget. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mad for a minute, down a well-lit corridor crowded with people : a horrible sight. These terrors, so far as I know, leave no mark on the later years : meanwhile, let us be thankful for sedatives and night-lights. Till we know why children are afraid of the dark, let us keep it from them. Another fear worth noting is the fear of blood. Mostly, when a small child is wild with rage over a bruise or a cut, it is not from pain, but from the fear of blood. Does it bleed ? That is his amazing first question. He rages, not knowing that he has any blood to spare ; he finds himself, to the best of his knowledge, ebbing away. But his hatred of the sight of his blood goes even deeper; it goes back, we know not how far, to we know not where. A surgeon, one of the best anaesthetists in London, has told me that if a patient, during an operation in the mouth, swallows, unconsciously, some blood, his stomach will be sure to reject it after the operation. If grown-up folk be thus ascidian, let us not laugh at small children who are frightened at the sight of their blood. These fears of the dark, and of blood, come from within. The fears which come from without are legion. To meet a person deformed, or mutilated by loss of a limb, or very ugly, is for some children a terrible business : none can say why. Fear of dogs, also, is common among them ; and a child will shy at a dog, yet ride gladly on the back of an elephant: so it cannot
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