Children in health and disease : a study of child-life.

  • David Forsyth
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Children in health and disease : a study of child-life. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    toad {Bufo vulgaris) are floating, headless embryos are formed. Returning to the human embryo, we find that the developing child, in spite of its isolation from the outside world, is exposed to numerous intra-uterine conditions which are capable of seriously affecting its healthy development. If these conditions are in operation during the earliest months of pregnancy, before the embryo has attained its human form, congenital deformities are likely to occur. In our present knowledge we cannot assert that all varieties of congenital deformity are thus induced, but with many varieties we have ample proof of this relation. Thus it sometimes happens that adhesions—perhaps the result of inflammation—form between the amnion and the embryo. The resulting tension may produce serious deformity by preventing the union of the body-walls in the middle line, and may even drag on such viscera as the heart, the brain, or the intestines, until they come to protrude outside the body. In other cases, when the amnion adheres to the posterior end of the embryo, pressure is exerted on the developing legs, with the result that the two limbs are completely fused together and the so-called siren monster is produced. In yet other cases, bands formed in connection with the amnion get tightly twisted round the arm or the leg of a fcetus, and the limb becomes amputated ; at birth the severed part may be found loose in the amniotic cavity. In each of the foregoing examples, the cause of the deformity, though lying within the uterus, is external to the embryo itself Sometimes, however, the cause bears an even more intimate relation to the child. The production of certain malformations has been traced to disease arising in the embryo while its organs are still in progress of formation. Perhaps the best instance of this is provided by dropsy of the cerebro-spinal canal. This pathological condition plays an important part in originating abnormalities of the brain and of the spinal cord. To it has been ascribed the condition (anencephalus) in which a child at birth is found to have no brain and no vault to its cranium—a deformity attributed to pressure of the dropsical fluid which ruptures the head at an early stage of its development. The
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