HISTORY OF PEDIATRICS 499 



siasm of youth. Their number has increased with the modern differ- 

 entiation of interests and studies. Specialization in medicine is no 

 longer what it was in old Egypt, namely, the outgrowth of the all- 

 pervading spirits of castes and sub-classifications, but as well the 

 consequence as the source of modern medical progress. It is difficult, 

 however, to say where specialization ends and over-specialization 

 begins, or to what extent specialization in medicine is the result of 

 mental and physical limitation or of the spirit of deepening research; 

 or. on the other hand, of indolence or of greed; or whether, while 

 specialization benefits medical science and art, it lowers the mental 

 horizon of the individual, and either cripples or enhances his useful- 

 ness in the service of mankind. For that is what medical science and 

 art are for. Jose de Letamendi is perhaps correct when he says that 

 a man who knows nothing but medicine does not even know medi- 

 cine. What shall we expect, then, of one who knows only a small 

 part of medicine and nothing beyond? 



Congresses in general have been of two kinds. They were called by 

 specialists for specialists, or they met for the purpose of removing 

 or relieving the dangers of limitation. This is what explains the great 

 success of international and of national gatherings, such as the 

 German, British, American, and others, and what has given the 

 Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons with its triennial 

 Washington meetings its broadening and chastening influence. 



Nor are medical meetings the only attempts at linking together 

 what has a tendency to get disconnected. Look at our literature. 

 The rising interest in the history of medicine as exhibited in Europe 

 and lately also among us, and individual contributions, such as 

 Gomperz's great book on Greek thinkers; or even lesser productions, 

 such as Eymin's Medecins et Philosophes, 1904; or the important 

 pictorial works of Charcot, Richet, and Hollander, prove the corre- 

 lation of medicine with history, philosophy, and art. 



Our special theme is the history of pediatrics and its relations to 

 ot her specialties, sciences, and arts. Now Friedrich Ludwig Meissner's 

 Grundlage der Literatur der Pddiatrik, Leipzig, 1850, contains on 

 246 pages about 7000 titles of printed monographs written before 

 1849 on diseases of children, or some subject connected with pedo- 

 logy. Of these, 2 were published in the fifteenth century, 16 in the 

 sixteenth, 21 in the seventeenth, 75 in the eighteenth. P. Bagel- 

 lardus De aegritudinibus puerorum, 1487, and Bartholomeus Met- 

 linger, Ein vast niitzlich Regiment der jungen Kinder, Augsburg, 

 1473, opened the printed pediatric literature of Europe. In the six- 

 teenth century, Sebastianus Austrius, De puerorum morbis, Basileae, 

 1549, and Hieronymus Mercurialis, De morbis puerorum tractatus, 

 1583, are facile principes ; in the eighteenth, Th. Harris, De morbis 

 infantum, Amstelodami, 1715; Loew, De morbis infantum, 1719; 



