Children in health and disease : a study of child-life.

  • Forsyth, David.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Children in health and disease : a study of child-life. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    36/394 (page 10)
    it has yet to be shown that the weight of a child at birth is an exact indication of its healthiness. The second factor is the influence of physical work during the later months of pregnancy. It is commonly held that if women are employed in arduous occupations up to the time of their confinement, their infants are likely to be adversely affected. Here, again, we are without any conclusive proof. Most women engaged in household duties continue them up to the time of their confinement, while in primitive nations it is customary for the women to work in the fields until the last. In the preceding pages we have a series of examples which shows that causes, comparatively simple in their nature, may produce profound structural — and therefore functional- abnormalities in the fcetal child. Though in each of the examples the result is of a striking character, we cannot doubt that there must be many less serious influences which will produce milder results. In other words, the embryo and the fcetal child are continually exposed to influences that tend to modify their development. Only when these influences are present to an average degree and operate in an average way will an average or normal child be the result. On occasions when they happen to act in a particularly favourable way, the development of the child or of certain of its organs will be more than usually favoured. Under converse conditions the develop- ment of the child or of certain of its organs will be adversely influenced. The degree of development of one organ and its function will react on other organs and their functions, and these in their turn will modify others. When, further, we remember that an individual is an expression of his physio- logical processes, and that an alteration in one single function may profoundly change his whole being, we can understand the essential importance of the intra-uterine environment, not only on the physical, but also on the mental welfare of the future child and man. Vitally important as is this conclusion, we find at the present day but little disposition to apply it in practice. This indiffer- ence is accounted for, perhaps, by the imperfection of our knowledge of intra-uterine conditions of life. We do not yet