Feebleness of growth and congenital dwarfism : with special reference to dysostosis cleido-cranialis / by Murk Jansen.

  • Jansen, Murk, 1867-1935.
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Feebleness of growth and congenital dwarfism : with special reference to dysostosis cleido-cranialis / by Murk Jansen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST PARI Clinicians of all ages have drawn a distinction between “ Disease ” and “ Feebleness,” so much so that they have been in the habit of saying that the disease is cured and feebleness is the cause of death. They have studied the feebleness of certain organs by the changes that have taken place in their functions. But the feebleness of one of the most important among the functions of the organism, viz. that of growth, has been almost completely neglected. An opinion seems even to prevail among pathologists that a growing subject may come under the influence of an injurious agent without his growth being affected. In the present study we have tried to supply this deficiency by studying the manner in which injurious influences will affect the growth of the individual. The knowledge of this will teach us how to infer from the body-height, form, attitude, gait and other signs in the adult to what extent he has been affected by the operation of injurious agents during the period of his growth. Clinicians and pathologists have indeed observed the symptoms which we have ranged amongst those of feebleness of growth, and have described them under different names, mostly derived from the Greek and ending in “ itis,” “ ism ” or “ osis,” and as erases, diatheses, status, habitus or anomalies of the constitution. Their nature and their relation to the normal condition, however, have not been specified. In the present study, therefore, we shall describe no new symptoms. We shall only try to indicate the relation of certain well-known phenomena to the normal condition, as well as the rules according to which they evolve from the normal state. DEFINITION OF FEEBLENESS OF GROWTH In order properly to explain the nature of the changes we have in view, let us imagine a child which is affected by a focus of microbic infection. This focus—if serious enough—will render the child “ ill,” and will provoke qualitative changes, which may even be specific for the microbe in question. It is not to these facts, already much studied, that we wish to direct attention ; but to the fact that the child, in addition to manifesting