Lectures on the diseases of infancy and childhood.

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the diseases of infancy and childhood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    Nor is this all; but many important consequences result from the period of childhood being one of unceasing development. In the adult the structure of the body is complete, and its functions are the same to-day as they were yesterday, but the child learns successively to breathe, to feel, to think; and its body is daily undergoing modifications to fit it for new duties, as well as daily growing in size and strength. Disease, therefore, not merely disturbs the present, but its influence reaches to the future; it not only interrupts the present function of the organ that is affected, but it puts a stop for a time to the completion of the general machinery of the body, or disarranges the due proportion of one part of that machinery to another. Moreover, there are periods, namely, those of the first and second den- tition, when very great changes take place in the organism of the child, and when all these dangers are especially to be feared. Disease is then frequent and serious beyond what it is at other times, and every ailment then warrants a double measure of anxiety ; while, on the other hand, if these epochs are safely passed, there succeeds a season of comparative im- munity from many affections that before were both common and perilous. But, if this be so, you will at once perceive that something more is essential to the successful treatment of children’s diseases than to watch their advances carefully, and to adapt the strength and doses of your reme- dies to the tender years of your patients. It is not mere hyperbole to say that you have to study a new semeiology, to learn a new pathology, and new therapeutics. Matters of such importance cannot be properly exa- mined at the end of a course of lectures on midwifery. I have therefore preferred making them the subjects of separate consideration during the summer, when the comparative leisure of the season will, I hope, enable some among you to study the diseases of children not only in the lecture- room, but also in the large field for their observation which you will find at the Children’s Infirmary. I must warn you, however, of one difficulty which you will encounter at the very outset,—a difficulty that disheartens many, and makes them abandon in despair the study of children’s diseases. Your old means of inves- tigating disease will here to a great degree fail you, and you will feel ahnost as if you had to learn your alphabet again, or as if, entering a country whose inhabitants you expected to find speaking the same language, and having the same manners as the people in the land you had lately left, you were to hear around you everywhere the sounds of a foreign tongue, and to observe manners and customs such as you had never seen before. You cannot question your patient; or if old enough to speak, still, through fear, or from comprehending you but imperfectly, he will probably give you an incorrect reply. You try to gather information from the expression of his countenance, but the child is fretful, and will not bear to be looked at; you endeavour to feel his pulse, he struggles in alarm: you try to aus- cultate his chest, and he breaks out into a violent fit of crying.