The diseases of children : a short introduction to their study / by James Frederic Goodhart.

  • Goodhart, James Frederic, 1845-1916.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The diseases of children : a short introduction to their study / by James Frederic Goodhart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    small, or the convolutions may be rudimentary or simple. One part or other may be absent or ill- developed—the eyeballs and optic tract jierhaps, or some part of the basal ijanglia, or one side or other of the cerebellum. And in the acquired forms, thick membranes, pachymeningiti.s, cysts, thickening or de- formity of the skull, etc., may bo found in respective cases. Cretinism, as commonly .seen, is a di.sea.se ■w hich is endemic in certain parts of certain countries. In . Kurope, it .abounds in Styria and the T3U'ol, and it is not uncommon in the Swdss valle3as. Savoy, and Pied- mont. It is occasionally seen, though it can nowdiere be .said to be endemic, in Kngland, in the dales of Derbyshire and Yorkshire; but in this countiy it is more gencrall3’^ known as a sporadic atl'ection, which owns no special habitat. Happily it is not common. Those who h.ave ch.arge of Large as3dums for idiots see most of it, .and Dr. Fletcher Ee.ach, of fiarenth AsN’lum, has published some interesting cases. Dr. Hilton Fagge was the first in this country to call attention to it and to aj)pl3' the title “ Sporadic cretinism,” in .a valuable paper in the Transactions of the liojjal Medical and Chirnrgiced Societj/. ft is a curious and intere.sting disease, so strangely contradictoi’\- is it in its externals; for in many respects age comes to the fe.atures in babyhood, while the blight of baljvhood, in its we.akness, imbecilitv, .and I puniness, settles upon the coi’poi'eal form, and withers, the opening mind. The appeaiance of those cases is veiy characteristic. The3’ cease to grow in veiy early infancy, and vear after year they change so little, that the child of two or three I'omains much the same at eight or ten, or even twent} 3'ears. In t'wo coses,, that have been for some time under my own notice, a girl of nine and a boy of fourteen h.ave hardl3 .altered,, the girl since she was four, the bo3' since three years- of age. They have a 3'ellowish chlorotic aspect, their skin is thick, harsh, and wrinkled, and the subcu-