HISTORY OF PEDIATRICS 519 



America has been preceded by countries to which we are not in 

 the habit of looking for our models. Bulgaria and Hungary have 

 no schools without physicians. On the other hand, Vienna has 

 none for its 200,000 school-children. It is reported that the alder- 

 men refused to appoint one. One of them objected for the reason 

 that the doctor might be tempted to examine the Vienna lassies 

 too closely. His business would be, and is, to look out for the health- 

 fulness of the school buildings, its lighting, warming, cleanliness, 

 the cleanliness of the children and their health, and that of the 

 teachers. A tubercular teacher is a greater danger to the children 

 than these, who rarely expectorate, to each other. He would take 

 cognizance of the first symptoms of infectious diseases, examine 

 eyes, ears, and teeth, and inquire into chronic constitutional dis- 

 eases, such as rachitis and scrofula in the youngest pupils. He 

 might undertake anthropometrical measurements and benefit 

 science while aiding his wards. He would be helped in all these 

 endeavors by the teachers, who must learn to pride themselves on 

 the robust health of their pupils, as they now look for the accumu- 

 lation of knowledge which may be exhibited in public examina- 

 tions. 



They would soon learn, what Christopher demonstrated, that 

 physical development, greater weight, and larger breathing capac- 

 ity, correspond with increased mental power, joining to this the 

 advice that a physical factor as well as the intellectual one, now 

 entirely relied upon, should be introduced in the grading of pupils. 

 (Charles F. Gardiner and H. W. Hoagland, Growth and Develop- 

 ment of Children in Colorado, Transactions, American Climatological 

 Association, 1903.) 



Our knowledge of the physiology and pathology of the nervous 

 system of all ages would be defective without lessons derived from 

 the fetus and infant. Amongst the newly-born we have often to 

 deal with arrests of development, such as microcephalus, or with 

 that form of fetal meningitis or of syphilitic alterations of blood- 

 vessels which may terminate in chronic hydrocephalus. When 

 the insufficient development of reflex action in the newly-born 

 up to the fifth or sixth week has passed, the very slow develop- 

 ment of inhibition during the first half-year or more, together with 

 the rapid increase of motor and sensitive irritability, explains the 

 frequency of eclampsia and other forms of convulsions. Many of 

 them require, however, an additional disposition, which is afforded 

 either by the normal rapid development of the brain, or the abnor- 

 mal hyperemia of rachitis. The last twenty-five years have in- 

 creased our knowledge considerably in many directions. Congenital, 

 premature, complete, or partial ossification of the cranial sutures 

 lead mechanically to idiocy, or paralysis, or epilepsy; it is a con- 



