Early childhood / by Margaret Mcmillan.

  • Margaret McMillan
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Early childhood / by Margaret Mcmillan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER III. MOVEMENTS. All living creatures move. Take up the tiny hand of an infant and you will see that it trembles. Not only the fingers, but the whole body moves tremulously. These feeble move- ments effect nothing at all. And yet they tell us that the child lives—that the brain is active—that nerve-currents are already passing from the Royal Organ to the extremities. But now the baby is twelve months old and all is changed. He tries to walk, to grasp, to rattle things together. He points, pulls, strikes, salutes, caresses— he tries to speak, that is to say makes rapid move- ments with the vocal organs. And these movements are directed more or less by zvill. They appear to have nothing at all to do with the helpless movements peculiar to an earlier stage of life. And yet the child has not entirely ceased to be an infant. He has little control of the various parts of his body. Any stimulation of the nervous system causes him to perform large movements. He laughs,
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