Instructions to mothers and nurses on the management of children in health and disease : comprehending directions for regulating their diet, dress, exercise, and medicine ; with a variety of prescriptions adapted to the use of the nursery, and an index of medical terms / James Kennedy.

  • Kennedy, James, 1803-1868
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Instructions to mothers and nurses on the management of children in health and disease : comprehending directions for regulating their diet, dress, exercise, and medicine ; with a variety of prescriptions adapted to the use of the nursery, and an index of medical terms / James Kennedy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    r least, after separation from its mother. At this period, it has been found to exceed eleven inches in length. Its head continues to be predominant, in size, above all the other members; but the skull remains pliant and gristly, with its « open * very extensive. The foetal skin, as yet, some advocates in the medical profession. All this, however, does not contribute any thing towards the establishment of its accuracy. Very numerous,-almost innumerable,-observations afford results which, by the strongest inductions, demonstrate the truth of the opposite axiom,—that more than one half of those infants who are born in the eighth month do live, while of such as have been born in the seventh, not very many survive. Dr. Merriman of Lon- don, whose authority, founded entirely on practical experience, must be held as decisive on such a question,—has published a List containing seventy cases of premature birth. Of these, thirty-six were children born in the eighth month, and thirty-four in the seventh:— among the former, only eight died during the first four weeks; but, of the latter, twenty-one died within the same period.— In twin-cases, this observation holds equally good, and nearly in the same proportion; and, of still-born children also, by far the greater number is in the seventh, than in the eighth month— However much, therefore, we may be disposed to respect tradi- tionary opinions, there can be no philosophy in maintaining them, when their inconsistency with nature and general experience has been made evident. * Open of the Head.—The aperture, emphatically so denomi- nated in colloquial language, is occasioned by a considerable por- tion of the skull, between the parietal and divided frontal bone, being imperfectly ossified in new-born children. It has also been named the fontanel, from a pulsation of the brain being dis- tinctly perceived underneath the yielding teguments by which it is covered. The defect, however, is quite natural, and depends on the late ossification of the angles of these bones,—the last in the body to assume the true osseous consolidation. In general, this opening is obliterated within a year after birth; but there are