The development of the child / by Nathan Oppenheim.

  • Nathan Oppenheim
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The development of the child / by Nathan Oppenheim. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    different objects in the two ages: in the adult the repair of body waste is the only end sought; in the child, besides this, there are additional reasons, such as the supplying of greater energy than at any previous time, and also the forming of entirely new tissue, such as would be commensurate with added growth. Like- wise the deprivation from food, starvation, is fatal for each in a different way; in the adult death occurs because the amount of food is too small to atone for the processes of disintegration; in the child the same result is reached for the same reason, plus the equally or more important one that the nervous system, on account of its unstable and unripe condition, more easily and quickly becomes exhausted. On more minute examination, one finds greater and greater differences, until one comes to believe that we have been trying to see our children in a totally false light. It is more than a figure of speech to say that the child is father of the man; it is rather a great bound of the imagination. The child is simply a stage in a development which is unstable, which changes in as due proportion as the embryo changes into the infant. From the moment of conception till full adult life, there is one continuous change that is steady, but decreasing in rapidity in proportion to the length of time during which it has been in prog- ress. The change is universal, the different parts of the body participating in it in varying degrees. The