The Child in Human Progress

MR. ELBRIDGE T. GERRY FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN
By George Henry Payne With a Foreword by A. Jacobi, M.D., LL.D. With 40 Illustrations G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1916
Copyright, 1916 BY GEORGE HENRY PAYNE The Knickerbocker Press, New York

THIS is a new sort of book, and unique. That is why I look upon the permission to write a brief preface for it as a rare privilege. Writings on children are frequent. When, in 1875, I contributed, for Karl Gerhardt’s immense Handbuch , my Hygiene of the Child , I quoted seven hundred treatises or pamphlets on that subject. There are now at least seven thousand of the kind, and the number of text-books on the diseases of children and infants do no longer lead a pardonable, rarely a laudable, existence. A few monographs on special subjects, or modern publications, as Erich Wulffen’s The Child: His Nature and Degeneration (Berlin, 1913), or the two large anthropological volumes by H. Ploss, The Child in the Customs and Morals of Nations (third edition by B. Renz, 1911), are praiseworthy examples of useful books. But while these are instructive they do not rouse historical interest.
Indeed, the history of the child has been grossly neglected. The epoch-making works of Rosenstein, Charles West, Rilliet and Barthez, and Karl Gerhardt contain no history. The work of Puschmann (Neuberger and Pagel) fills twenty pages with the history of the child in a text of three thousand pages relating to the history of medicine. Altogether our country has been disrespectful to its best possessions, viz., the children. There was until a few decades ago not even a professional teaching of the children’s diseases in our medical schools. A regular chair was established in 1860 (New York Medical College),—it lasted for a few years only. The second was in 1898 (Harvard). There were few child’s hospitals or wards in hospitals until a few years ago, even in the largest cities. Society, law, humanitarianism did not mind children. It is only a few months that an official publication in our democratic country carried the title; “Is There a Need of a Child Labour Law?” and our civilization was humbled by medical discussion of the advisability of killing the deformed or unpromising new-born. It seems to take a long time before this republic of ours begins to work out of the ruts of semi-barbarism. And now, at last, there is a book to supply our wants.