A treatise on the diseases of children : and management of infants from the birth / by Michael Underwood, M.D. ; three volumes in one.

  • Underwood, Michael, 1736-1820.
Date:
May, 1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the diseases of children : and management of infants from the birth / by Michael Underwood, M.D. ; three volumes in one. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    require the greatest assistance ; such are attacks of phren- zy, delirium, and some kinds of convulsions, as well as all the disorders of idiots and lunatics. But these have been successfully treated in every age, not excepting insanity itself, and the melancholy subject happily restored to soci- ety, his family, and himself. It should likewise be considered, that if infants, for the reason above-mentioned, are to be excluded the benefit of a physician's advice, it is difficult to say at what age chil- dren may safely be intrusted to his care; since at the age of five or six years, they would frequently mislead the en- quirer, who should trust to their own account of their com- plaints. Their ideas of things are too indistinct to afford us sufficient information, and they accordingly often call sickness at the stomach, pain ; and pain, sickness ; they will frequently make no reply to general questions, and when they are asked more particularly whether they have any pain in one or other part of the body, they almost constantly answer in the affirmative •, though it afterwards frequently turns out they were mistaken. But I may venture to assert, that although infants can give no account of their complaints in the manner we .re- ceive information from adults, their diseases are all plainly and sufficiently marked by the countenance, the age, the manifest symptoms, and the faithful account given by the parent, or an intelligent nurse. This I am so confident of, that I never feel more at my ease, in prescribing for any disorders than those of infants, and never succeed with more uniformity, or more agreeably to the opinion I may have adopted of the seat and nature of the disease. Eve- ry distemper may be said, in some sense, to have a language of its own, and it is the business of a physician to be ac- quainted with it •, nor do those of children speak less intel-