On the growth of the recruit and young soldier : with a view to a judicious selection of "growing lads" for the army, and a regulated system of training for recruits / by Sir William Aitken.

  • Aitken, William, 1825-1892.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the growth of the recruit and young soldier : with a view to a judicious selection of "growing lads" for the army, and a regulated system of training for recruits / by Sir William Aitken. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    Having these considerations in view, the earliest condition in which we come into professional relation- ship with the soldier is that in which we see him as a recruit. His physical condition is then of prime moment as part of the material composing the army. The life of a man or woman—soldier or civilian —is divisible into certain periods which successively merge one into another, and which, in the main, are characterised by distinct and recognisable structural conditions and functional manifestations both of health and of disease.^ These periods are three in number :— (1) The period of development or evolution of his body and of its several organs. (2) The period of maturity. (3) The period of decline, degeneration, devolu- tion, or, as it has been also conveniently termed, the period of involution. The first period, that of development, extends from the impregnation of the ovum to the complete growth of the body and the differentiation of its component tissues and organs. It comprises the stages : (i) oifixtal life; (2) of infancy, from birth to the time of first dentition; (3) childhood, from the appearance of the milk teeth to the cutting of the first of the permanent set, i.e. from the end of the 1st year to the 7th year; (4) boyhood or girlhood, which extends from this time up to puberty at r4th 1 Alchin, Medical Times and Gazette, vol. ii., 1885.