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

  • Goodhart, James Frederic, Sir, 1845-1916.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    follow, sometimes several at once, sometimes with long intervals between them. It often happens that the four central incisors are cut, an interval follows, and then with steady progress come all the rest save the last four molars, the appearance of which may, even in healthy children, be deferred for three or four months over the average age of two years. Dentition is usually held to be the cause of many ailments, but to what extent it is really so is doubtful. The time of dentition is one of transition. A uniform and bland diet is being changed for one of greater variety, and the febrile attacks, diarrhoea, and vomiting which are so rife at this time are more satisfactorily exj)lained by indigestibility of food than by any occult influence of tooth-cutting. This much, however, may be allowed : that the growth of a child is one of stages; that there are periods during which unusual progress is made; and that the period of dentition is one of these. Increased activity of all the physiological processes at work necessarily imphes greater risks of friction between one organ and another, or even of a regular break down. Excessive energy, if not properly regulated or adequately expended, is liable to lead to an explosion of some sort or another. Some such general hypothesis as this must hold good for the instability of working which is common in all the viscera during the first dentition, and to a less extent during the second dentition and in the years which usher in puberty. In this general sense the time of dentition is no doubt a time of peril. The mortality is high, and of disorders of many kinds—convulsions, bronchitis, pneumonia, diarrhoea, &c.—each claims its victims. But this is not as a consequence of the eruption of the teeth, but as pai't of a general activity of growth and development, to which dentition and morbid phenomena both in a sense respond. Still there are no doubt certain minor evils attending dentition which require at least a mention. Some