Physical efficiency in children / by Sir James Crichton-Browne ; the Presidential Address delivered before the medical section of the International Congress for the Welfare and Protection of Children, held in London on the 15th July, 1902.

  • James Crichton-Browne
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physical efficiency in children / by Sir James Crichton-Browne ; the Presidential Address delivered before the medical section of the International Congress for the Welfare and Protection of Children, held in London on the 15th July, 1902. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    of none as likely as excessive stimulation of the cerebral centres in the weak and sickly. MM. Robin and Binet have shown that a state of exaggerated respiratory activity per sc constitutes a soil favour- able for tuberculous infection of the lungs, and it may well be that a state of heightened brain activity invites the invasion of tubercular meningitis. It is that disease that is the commonest penalty of precocity, and so often cuts down our little prodigies of wit and learning, like Pet Marjorie, and it is not improbable that its con- tinued currency during childhood and adolescence, in spite of sanitary opposition, is connected with overstrain in immature and badly- nourished brains. The seeds of tubercle may long lie dormant in the system, and it is possible, therefore, that the copious crop of that disease during adolescence, particularly in young women from fifteen to twenty years of age, may be to some extent due to schooltime sowings. But how- ever that may be, there can be no question that all children affected by tuberculosis should be rigidly excluded from schools, both for their own sakes and for that of their companions. The conditions of school life are propitious to the advance of the disease, and also to its propagation. Lupus, scrofula, tabes mesenterica, and tuberculous joint and bone disease are not perilous in the sense of infection, but a phthisical child, emitting from its lungs perhaps 350,000,000 bacilli in the course of twenty-four hours, is a source of imminent danger to those cooped up with it in close, badly-ventilated rooms, and kept in constrained attitudes, especially when they are badly nourished. The education of children labouring under tuberculosis should be carried on in special seaside sanatoria, where they cannot be baneful to others, and where everything is made to minister to their restoration to health. The King, over whose recovery we are rejoicing, whose fortitude and unselfish devotion throughout his illness have filled us with admiration, and who is Patron of this Congress, said at his first council, I am fully determined, as long as there is breath in my body, to work for the good and amelioration of my people. It is for his subjects to aid him in that noble mission, and even the humblest of them may do something by throwing his mite of personal endeavour into the treasury of public philanthropy, and in no way can the good and amelioration of the people be more surely advanced than by providing for the protection and welfare of little children.
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