Special Article on Influenza
FOOTNOTES:
[B]
See special article on Influenza, page 408.
[C]
This article is also printed in pamphlet form and may be had from the
author for 50c. Postage paid.
CHILDREN'S DISEASE.
"The cause of the Poor to plead on,
'twixt Deity and Demon."
(Carlyle).
"Child of mortality whence contest thou,
Why is thy countenance sad, and why are
Thine eyes red with weeping?"
(Bartauld).
I have opened this chapter with somewhat startling mottos, for its pathetic theme is
Children and children's disease; and it seems to me appropriate, in view of what it
portends, to send forth in this form a world-thought, as a harbinger of sympathy—a
foreword which may set in motion the thought-waves of pity. For of all living
creatures born into this world of pompous ignorance and maudlin solicitude to
struggle for precarious existence from the cradle to the grave, by reason of the
unnatural conditions of our vaunted hygienic and educational systems—generously
termed "civilization"—there is surely nothing quite so "poor," so woefully devoid
of practical protection, and, in its exceptional helplessness, so weakly gushed over
and little understood as the child of frail humanity.
"The cause of the poor"—thus the legend runs—"in deity's or demon's name." For
truly, of the two angels which, we are told, attend upon the birth of credulous
mankind and the initial stages of development, the malign influence would seem to
be ever in the ascendant, irrespective of the social status of the, more or less, pre-
natally affected, innocent reproduction wherein is focused the latent follies and
delinquencies of the race, as portrayed in the course of its long pangenesis.
Now, incredible though it may seem and deplorable though it be, the secret which
has revealed itself with absolute force and conviction to the judicial minds of
unemotional scientific observers is simply this: that the children of the present
generation are, as an incontestable matter of actual fact, really brought into this
world alive and some attain to maturity, not through maternal intelligence, but
rather, in spite of mothers.
This is a hard saying but none the less a truth. They
survive in spite of the idiosyncracies of their fondly irrational, untutored mothers
rather than because of any practical, efficient effort these contribute towards the
well being and survival of their offspring. This, as a general rule, is unhappily
beyond question. It is a rule which has, naturally, many exceptions,—many brave
and brilliant ones—these however only serve to confirm it.
Comte, writing as an authority on the subject, made the assertion that there is
hardly an example on record of a child of superior genius whose mother did not
possess also a superior order of mind. As an example he cites: The mother of
Napoleon Bonaparte, high-souled, heroic and beautiful; the mother of Julius
Caesar, a singularly fine character, wise and strong; the mother of Goethe,—
affectionately termed: "The delight of her children, the favourite of poets and
princes—one whose splendid talents and characteristics were reproduced in her
son."
There are also, we know full well, unnumbered hosts of others, whose kindly
light has been shed in many an humble or secluded home, whose beloved names
have been called blessed by thousands though unrecorded in historic page—who
have lived and loved and passed on to higher realms—to the world, to eulogy and
to fame unknown
|
