Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... of the life of a child. Though progress in many fields of child study has been great during recent years, the most notable change in procedure has been the increased stress put upon accurate and exhaustive diagnosis, and for our purposes today diagnosis is the second' great word to be emphasized. If, at any time, one should take a hundred consecutive cases of children as they come to any institution, it would be found that possibly as many as 50% of them would be mouth breathers. Possibly more then 50% would have carious teeth. Possibly one out of four would be from 5 to 20% underweight. Possibly every alternate child would have round shoulders, and it might be true that 25% of them would have lateral curvature of the spine. Possibly 10% would be afilicted with enuresis, and perhaps 30% would be found to have foreign bodies and cerumen in the ear; and so on to the end of the story. These percentages would differ from time to time, but in my own experience I have found all of these percentages in one single segment of the work of one hundred children. At all events, there are thirty or forty very well defined physical ailments which, upon thorough examination, are found to occur with sufficient frequency to awaken the suspicion that all is not done that should be done when an institution reports, as many have done, "that during the year there was no serious illness excepting measles, whooping-cough or scarlet fever,"as the case may be. Many of these difiiculties get by the ordinary examiner because the ordinary tests of a child's physical condition fail to take note of them. For instance, we have found that children might be fully up to weight and yet have more or less serious lateral curvature of the spine. A...