The medical adviser in life assurance / by Edward Henry Sieveking.

  • Sieveking, Edward Henry, Sir, 1816-1904.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical adviser in life assurance / by Edward Henry Sieveking. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    infant, materially affects its future well-being. Hot- house plants, and plants overstimulatecl by rich manure, are the exact prototypes of children reared in a manner calculated to anticipate the normal periods of development. The laws of nature are not difficult to read that bear upon this matter; and were it possible to go into the question of early training of our applicants for insurance, we should doubtless be able to fix, with greater certainty than we now possess, their future chances of life. I aUude more particrdarly to the feeding of infants,* to the prejudicial influence of hand-feeding, adopted for various reasons to which it is rmnecessary to allude here, in lieu of the only physiologically correct food for infants, the maternal milk. During the later periods of childhood, the employment of artificial stimuli of all kinds, physical, emotional, and intel- lectual, largely impairs brain-growth, muscle-growth, blood-growth, either by a development of one part of the organism at the ex]Dense of another, or by directly stunting the entire process of nutrition. We need scarcely dwell longer on the aspects of childhood in reference to life insurance at present. Although some offices present an attractive feature with reference to early insurance, by which the premiums are returnable if death occurs before the age of 21, this very arrangement renders as close an * Those who wish to study the laws governing the nutri- tion and development of the child, are particularly referred for valuable information to Dr. Edward Smith's elaborate work on Health and Disease, as influenced by the Daily, Seasonal, and other Cyclical Changes in the Human System : London, 1861.