Lectures on the Diseases of Infancy and Childhood

PREFACE

ΤΟ

THE FIFTH EDITION.

TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO the kindness of Dr. ROBERT WILLIS threw open to me the field of observation afforded by the Children's Dispensary in Lambeth, and in 1842 I succeeded him there in the office of Physician.

In 1847 I gave a series of Lectures on the Diseases of Children, based on observations made at the Children's Dispensary, to the Pupils of the Middlesex Hospital; and these Lectures appeared in the Medical Gazette' during the summer and autumn of the same year.

In 1848 these Lectures were published as a distinct book; founded on the notes of 600 cases, and 180 post-mortem examinations, which I had observed at the dwellings of the poor in the district where I laboured.

The establishment of the Children's Hospital, in Great Ormond Street, brought me readier means of more careful observation, and the appointment within the past four years of different gentlemen to the office of Registrar, has provided for the record of cases of which want of leisure would have otherwise prevented me from preserving an account.

I have thus been enabled in each successive edition to add to the preceding one, and I trust to improve upon it. The present edition embodies the results of 1,200 recorded cases, and of nearly 400 post-mortem examinations, collected

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PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.

from between 30,000 and 40,000 children who, during the past twenty-six years, have come under my care, either in public or in private practice.

While improving, as far as I could, the substance of this book, I have not attempted to alter its form; for the fact that it has passed through three editions in America, and through four in Germany, while it has also been translated into Danish, Dutch and Russian, and that the French translation is now in the press, may be taken as good proof that it has to a great extent met the wants of the Profession both here and abroad.

A moment's satisfaction may be pardoned me in thankfully acknowledging these evidences that my toil has not been fruitless. But it is with no feeling of flattered vanity that I now lay down my pen. The revision in mature age of the labours of one's youth must, with most persons, minister to self-reproach rather than to self-satisfaction. The same unsolved problems meet one's eye now as met it years ago; one's deficiencies are felt more deeply; they seem graver and less excusable as the time for remedying them passes by; one longs for the leisure gone, for the energies of former years, which one fancies, coupled with the soberness of advancing life, might help to add something more and better to the common store of knowledge.

I can for my part say most honestly, that nothing will give me greater pleasure than to see some younger man, better furnished for the task than I was, devote himself to the cultivation of that field where I have laboured. No one would greet the skilled husbandman more heartily than I, nor rejoice more sincerely to see him reap, as he cannot fail to do, a most abundant harvest.

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