Moto-sensory development : observations on the first three years of a child / by George V. N. Dearborn.
- Dearborn, George Van Ness, 1869-
- Date:
- 1910
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Moto-sensory development : observations on the first three years of a child / by George V. N. Dearborn. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
41/234 page 27
![readily she discriminates all her familiar acquaintances by the sense of smell—that sense with something of the fallen angel about it. If many years should elapse before I saw [sic] an intimate friend again, I think I should recognize his odor instantly in the heart of Africa as promptly as would my brother that barks. She also has some striking experiences of kinesthesia related in this book of much sug- gestiveness. Kroner reports that a girl of eighteen hours refused a breast on which oil of amber had been rubbed. Signs of smelling are observed, he says, a quarter of an hour after birth. On the other hand, Miss Shinn says: I saw absolutely no sign of sensibility to smell, but, rather, indi- cations of its absence for months after birth. She, however, admits its usual presence at birth. Day 154 was the first on which L. first showed unmistakable signs of the clear perception of an odor. No active early experiments to test its presence were properly made. See Day IS, however. End of 9th Week. 64th DAY. L. slept last night from nine till five. She seemed to take delight in a bright-red book, watching it more closely than she did a dull book seen under exactly similar conditions. Any slowly moving object is attended to now closely as it moves, my feet in slippers, e. g., three feet away. She can't move her eyes for this purpose oftener than about once in two seconds, however. This long reaction-time probably implies that conscious effort was employed for making these eye-movements, that they were in part voluntary, for reflex reactions are more prompt than two seconds in case the active muscle be of the cross-striated, voluntary kind. Considerable muscular coor- dination is required in this movement, and deliberate order- liness of the sort takes time. Young kittens show the same conditions precisely at about the fourth week. A bell-shaped porcelain lamp-shade was sounded somewhat behind her and she turned her head slight-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21175019_0041.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
