Common disorders and diseases of childhood / by George Frederic Still.

  • Still, G. Frederic (George Frederic), Sir, 1868-1941.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Common disorders and diseases of childhood / by George Frederic Still. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/872 (page 17)
    MEDICAL ASPECTS OF GROWTH AND DEVELOP¬ MENT IN CHILDHOOD Infancy and childhood differ from all other periods of life in being pre-eminently the time of rapid development both physical and mental. It is this peculiarity which gives to many of the diseases of childhood special characters so that both in their clinical course and in their morbid anatomy they differ from disease in later life. Delay in the acquirement of functions and perversions of development, for instance of the bones in rickets, constitute no unimportant part of the morbid mani¬ festations in early life. For the recognition of departures from the normal, it is necessary to know what constitutes normal physical and mental development: the medical man, especially, who is frequently confronted with parents anxious to know whether their child is up to the normal standard in this respect or that, must needs have some knowledge of the facts and figures of development in infancy and childhood ; he must be familiar with the normal course of events, as well as with the variations which occur as the result of ill health. No man can carry in his memory all the weights and measures, dates and numbers which might be or have been compiled in connexion with this subject of growth and development ; but it is possible with very little effort to carry in the mind a sufficient outline of statistics, to enable us to fill in the particular figure for any intervening age with suffi¬ cient accuracy for practical purposes. I shall not attempt to reproduce here any exhaustive tables, but only to give such facts and figures as can be stored in the memory and so kept readily available for use. Let it be remembered that Nature is no stickler for uniformity : we say that the first tooth should appear at six months, but one infant will have it at four months, another will not have it till nine months, but both may be perfectly healthy ; and so with the weight, how much unnecessary anxiety there often is because STILL B