Health and recreation in childhood / by William N. Maccall.

  • Maccall, William N.
Date:
[1880]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health and recreation in childhood / by William N. Maccall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    1/14 (page 45)
    HEALTH AND RECREATION IN CHILDHOOD. BY WILLIAM N. MACCALL, M.D., Honorary Surgeon to the Clinical Hospital and Dispensary for Childrett. A S my daily work is the treatment of sick children, it naturally r\ occurred to me that the most suitable subject I could choose or my lecture to you to-night would be the management of infancy md childhood so as best to ward off sickness. For those of us vho have little ones committed to our care it must be a constantly )resent question, How are we to act so as to give them the argest measure of heakh and happiness in childhood? which alone :an give that greatest of all blessings in after life, a sound mind in I sound body. It is said that Ave never know the full value of a Jood thing until we have lost it, but it is not necessary that we should have lost the blessing of health ourselves in order to see :he immense difference between a child as it should be, a joyous Deing full of life and spirits, and the weakly or deformed little sufferers who fill the wards of our Children's Hospitals and meet 3ur eyes whenever we walk in the streets. Every one knows what a terrible waste of infant life there s, and I shall therefore not trouble you with many figures 3n the subject. A few will, however, serve to show you more ;learly how we stand in Manchester. In all England and iVales, according to the census of 1871, out of every 1,000 :hildren born 158 die before reaching the age of one year, rhis is a much higher death-rate than it should be. In certain iistricts it is much lower, and among the upper and profes- sional classes only about 80 in the 1,000 die during the same period. But when we come home to Manchester we find that 213 out of 1,000, or fully one in five, die under twelve months old ! rhe loss of Ufe falls still more heavily on the working, especially