A fact in the natural history of children, hitherto unobserved; which explains much concerning infantile diseases and mortality.

  • John Gardner
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A fact in the natural history of children, hitherto unobserved; which explains much concerning infantile diseases and mortality. 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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    s lection, memory, the faculty of Speech, the power of walking, and other less obvious functions, become succes- sively developed; all requiring the gradual and orderly growth of the brain until its completion in size marks the attainment of all its faculties, which require but due culture and exercise, to achieve all the mighty workings of mind. 6. The liveliness of sensation, quickness of action, and restlessness of children, mark the peculiar character of their nervous system. Their sensibility, though acute, is transient; their activity of limb springs from a ready and rapid flow of nervous influence from the brain to the muscles; and from the same principle arises the readiness with which sympathetic affections of distant parts occur in most of their diseases. Hence it has been often said that the characteristic of the infant temperament is ner- vous. This is correct, but when it is further inferred that there is a corresponding susceptibility to morbid im- pressions, and remedial influences, experience will not warrant the inference. Nothing indeed can be more ob- vious, than the differences that exist in different children, in their excitability and susceptibility to suffering, from various causes. Some, with all the characteristic quick- ness of action and nervous constitution of childhood, are no more obnoxious to disease than adults; whilst upon others, not a breath of air can blow, nor the slightest cause impinge, without arousing their latent morbid tendencies, and their brief span of existence seems marked through- out with every mode of pain and suffering.
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