The history of paediatrics : the progress of the study of diseases of children up to the end of the XVIIIth century / by George Frederic Still.

  • Still, G. Frederic (George Frederic), Sir, 1868-1941.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of paediatrics : the progress of the study of diseases of children up to the end of the XVIIIth century / by George Frederic Still. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    vii. 17). ‘We find it stated that Zoroaster was the only human being who ever laughed on the day on which he was born. We hear also that his brain pulsated so strongly that it repelled the hand when laid upon it, a presage of his future wisdom.’ In the same chapter he gives the earliest description of a case of morbid precocity, presumably a case of endocrine disturbance. We find it stated by historians that the son of Euthymenes of Salamis had grown to be 3 cubits [ = five feet] in height at the age of 3 years, that he was slow of gait and dull of comprehension, that at that age he had even attained puberty and his voice had become strong like that of a man. We hear also that he died suddenly of convulsions of the limbs at the completion of his third year. I my¬ self not very long ago was witness to exactly similar appearances, with the exception of the state of puberty, in a son of Cornelius Tacitus, a member of the equestrian order and procurator of Belgic Gaul. The Greeks call such children as these iKTparreXoi [freaks], we have no name for them in Latin.