Care of infants and young children / [A. Dingwall Fordyce].

  • Fordyce, Alexander Dingwall
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Care of infants and young children / [A. Dingwall Fordyce]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    90/192 (page 78)
    of blood and semi-translucent mucus, the immediate attendance of a doctor is imperative, as such cases practically always require operation. When operated on early they do extremely well, and the longer an opera- tion is put off the worse are the prospects of the child. During the first year it may become evident that the baby is mentally defective. Mental defect is the result of a great variety of causes, some of which we know, and some of which we are ignorant of. The baby with the abnormally small skull (microcephalus) (see plate III., fig. 18) is mentally defective, so is the baby very often with the unusually large skull (hydrocephalus) (see plate III., fig. 19). Some babies, owing to their facial resemblance to Oriental peoples, are known as Mongols (see plates IY. and VII., figs. 20 and 30). They are always mentally defective. Children with haemorrhages on their brain, which occurred at birth, are backward mentally, and there are many other forms of idiocy of a slighter or greater extent. Little babies who suffer from severe disease of any internal organ usually are, to some extent, mentally backward in later years, and a very particular form of such a condition is that where the thyroid gland in the neck is affected, where its secretion is absent—wholly or partly—where the child, if untreated, grows up a peculiar kind of dwarf—a cretin (see plate IY., fig. 22).