Volume 1

Pediatrics : the hygienic & medical treatment of children / by Thomas Morgan Rotch.

  • Rotch, T. M. (Thomas Morgan), 1849-1914.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pediatrics : the hygienic & medical treatment of children / by Thomas Morgan Rotch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. A few words are perhaps needed to explain what I have undertaken to do in the following pages, and the method of arrangement and classi- fication which has been employed. There has been no attempt to make such classifications as infectious and non-infectious diseases, because our knowledge of the former is increasing the number of that class so rapidly that for me it no longer constitutes a practical division for teaching. The book begins with a consideration of the infant at birth, and follows it through its various stages of development up to puberty. After dwelling rather more at length on normal development than is usual in works on pediatrics, the abnormal conditions are discussed. Beginning with the dis- eases which would naturally be met with in the early periods of life, and devoting considerable space to my observations on the blood of infants and of young children, the diseases of the different organs are then considered. With the exception of a few rare diseases of which it was impossible to get satisfactory types, the illustrations represent actual cases of my own, heretofore unpublished. The colored illustrations have received my closest attention, and the patients were seen personally with the artist, so as to insure accuracy. The establishment of milk-laboratories during the last three years has marked a new era in preventive medicine, and has made possible the scien- tific feeding of infants. As I believe that the medical treatment of the various abnormal conditions arising in infants is in the future to be largely dietetic rather than by means of drugs, I have given unusual prominence to the part of the work which is devoted to feeding. I have also endeavored, in conjunction with my colleagues in the Ameri- can Iediatric Society, to simplify the nomenclature of the various diseases, in order that physicians in different localities should by using identical names be the better able to aid one another in their investigations. A revision of the nomenclature of gastro-enteric diseases and of those of the mouth was especially called for on account of the changes which have followed our increasing knowledge of the etiology of these diseases. T. M. Rotch. Boston, Mass., October, 1895.