The diseases of infancy and childhood : for the use of students and practitioners of medicine / by L. Emmett Holt.

  • Luther Emmett Holt
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The diseases of infancy and childhood : for the use of students and practitioners of medicine / by L. Emmett Holt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    29/1210 (page 5)
    especially the necessity of beginning training during infancy. Much of course will depend upon the food and the digestion; but habit is a very large factor in the case. The training of the bladder is not quite so important, but the proper education of this organ adds much to the comfort of the child and the ease with which it is cared for. Before the end of the first year most intelli- gent children can be trained to indicate a desire to empty the bladder. Many mothers and nurses succeed in training children so well that by the tenth or eleventh month napkins are dispensed with during the day. On the other hand, it is very common to see children of two and even two and a half years still wearing napkins because of the lack of proper train- ing. Before it has reached the latter age a healthy child should go from 10 p. M. until morning without emptying the bladder. The annoyance and discomfort from the neglect of early training in this particular are very great. Night feeding is responsible for much of the difficulty expe- rienced in training children to hold the water during the night. General Hygiene of the Nervous System.—Great injury is done to the nervous system of children by the influences with which they are surrounded during infancy, especially during the first year. The brain grows more during the first two years than in all the rest of life. Normal healthy development of the nervous centres demands quiet, rest, peaceful surroundings, and freedom from everything which causes excitement or undue stimulation. The steadily increasing frequency of functional nervous diseases among young children is one of the most powerful arguments for greater atten- tion by physicians to the subject of the hygiene of the nervous sys- tem during infancy. Most parents err through ignorance. Playing with young children, stimulating to laughter and exciting them by sights, sounds, or movements until they shriek with apparent delight, may be a source of amusement to fond parents and admiring spectators, but it is almost invariably an injury to the child. This is especially harmful when done in the evening. It is the plain duty of the physician to enlighten parents upon this point, and insist that the infant shall be kept quiet, and that all such playing and romping as has been referred to shall, during the first year at least, be absolutely prohibited. Sleep.—The sleep of the newly-born infant is profound for the first two or three days and under normal conditions almost continuous. In the case of prolonged or tedious labor, or where from any cause undue compression has been exerted upon the head, it may approach the con- dition of semi-coma for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. This may be so deep as to excite apprehensions of serious brain lesions. If, however, there are associated with it no convulsions and no rigidity, this early stupor usually passes away on the second or third day. The sleep of early infancy is quiet and peaceful, but not very deep after