The tables of physical characteristics are based upon the work of Vierordt, Uffelmann, Schmid-Monnard, Pfaundler and Schlossmann. Holt, Kerley; the tables of mental characteristics upon the studies of G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey, Earl Barnes, and their disciples, and the summaries of Kirkpatrick, Tanner, Taylor, Tracy. The author’s personal experience with children, as a medium for developing these data into a composite grouping, has been supplemented by the criticisms and suggestions of individual physicians, biologists, and psychologists. The subject deserves much additional research in the comparative study of children.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Based on U. S. Census Report for 1913; causes arranged in decreasing rank.
CHAPTER VI
PREPARING FOR THE BABY
“If I were asked what I considered the chief requisite for the successful practice of pediatrics I would answer: The education of the mother. It is impossible to do even fairly good work in diseases of children without proper home coöperation. A direction is never followed out so well as when it is understood.”
—Doctor Charles G. Kerley.
“Is it not monstrous that the fate of a new generation should be left to the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy—joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers?
“To tens of thousands that are killed, add hundreds of thousands that survive with feeble constitutions, and millions that grow up with constitutions not so strong as they should be; and you will have some idea of the curse inflicted on their offspring by parents ignorant of the laws of life.”
—Herbert Spencer.
“Even the ordinary workman needs an acquaintance with the nature of his work before an employer will put a task into his hands. But for the right care of children no training in the mothers, nurses, or teachers has been considered essential. Consequently the standard exacted among such persons, instead of being very high, is very low.”