The children : how to study them : a course of lectures / by Francis Warner.

  • Warner, Francis, 1847-1926.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The children : how to study them : a course of lectures / by Francis Warner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    note the various postures presented by children brought for examination at the Children’s Hospital, and from 1878 I kept notes of the spontaneous pos- tures observed. The children were requested to hold out their hands, and the passive condition or posture of the hand was noted. At first it was difficult to describe the posture seen in precise language, though some were seen to be characteristic of certain nerve conditions. In 1879, while visiting Florence, it struck me that the posture of the hands of the Venus de Medici was exactly similar to the posture I had so often seen in nervous children. Later, at the British Museum, I saw the English Venus side by side with the Diana, feminine coyness and nervousness repre- sented side by side with the expression of energy and strength, and the contrast of the hand postures showed them to be in direct antithesis. While looking at the marble hands it became easy to describe their postures in precise language. In the hands of the nervous woman, the wrist is slightly flexed or bent, the knuckles are moderately extended back beyond the