AIMS OF MODERN PEDIATRICS 483 



the healing processes and protective mechanisms of nature, which 

 are already present in childhood, and whose further study promises 

 important revelations concerning the peculiarity of these diseases 

 of childhood. 



These facts, discovered in the course of the last decades by the 

 use of scientific methods, have considerably extended and clarified 

 the study of pediatrics. In place of the comparatively small num- 

 ber of diseases recognizable by evident characteristics, which form 

 the contents of the older text-books, modern pediatrics exhibits a 

 scientific structure, including all disturbances of the life processes, 

 arranged according to scientific principles, and in its completeness not 

 reached by any other specialty in medicine. The causes of diseases 

 as far as they are based on exogenous agencies are the same in chil- 

 dren as in adults. It is especially bacteriologic examination, which, 

 being in a position to show disease-producers as such, has aided 

 considerably in showing the identity of diseases which are often 

 so different clinically. Unfortunately, our knowledge is not suffi- 

 ciently advanced to make an etiologic grouping the sole basis of 

 our classification. 



Only a small number of diseases can be considered peculiar to 

 childhood, because they are caused by events which cannot occur 

 in the life of adults. These are the disturbances dependent upon 

 birth and on the change from intra-uterine to extra-uterine life, as 

 well as those concerning growth and development. In a certain 

 way somewhat analogous to the occupation diseases of adults 

 are here to be reckoned the injurious effects of school attendance, 

 as well as the acute infectious diseases which confer lasting im- 

 munity. If, in spite of this, as daily experience and medical sta- 

 tistics teach, the diseases of childhood show such great differences 

 in their number and form of manifestation, as well as in their course 

 and termination, this can only be due to the fact that between the 

 growing organism of the child and that of the completely developed 

 adult great differences exist in the reaction called forth by the disease- 

 process variations, which change constantly in the course of childhood. 

 The following reflection will show what close relations exist be- 

 tween the stage of development on the one hand and the type and 

 course of disease on the other hand. If we take a bird's-eye view 

 of the whole field we are struck especially by the following pecu- 

 liarities occurring in the course of diseases in childhood: 



1. The overwhelming frequency of fatalities in diseases, espe- 

 cially from functional disturbances, which explains the unsatisfac- 

 tory autopsy findings in so many cases. 



2. The insignificant causes producing the diseases; they are 

 much slighter than those necessary to produce the same diseases 

 in adults. They easily escape detection, and this explains why 



