Childhood / edited by T.N. Kelynack.

Date:
[1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Childhood / edited by T.N. Kelynack. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/168 (page 13)
    from four to five years, ten to twelve hours. Many children suffer from insufficient rest and sleep. Re- spirations in a newly born child amount to about 44 per minute. At the end of the first year and the commencement of the second they have fallen to about 28 ; during the third and fourth years they are about 25 ; by the fifteenth year they have fallen to 20. The pulse of the newly born infant is about 130 per minute. By the second year it has fallen to no; by the fifth to 100 ; by the eighth to 90 ; and by the twelfth to 80. During childhood the powers of digestion and assimilation are very active, but should not be overtaxed. Special care should be taken to secure hygienic habits in regard to the excretions. The bowels must be relieved daily. Children pass a relatively greater amount of urine than adults. A regular discipline in regard to relieving the bladder will obviate much difficulty. Children perspire freely, and a warm bath before retiring to bed is a hygienic procedure which is almost essential to health. During childhood the human machine is very active. Nutritional processes are at their maximum. There is great heat loss, but rapid heat-production. It is estimated that an infant consumes more than four times as much nutriment as is actually needed for growth ; this is in order that heat-production may be maintained. In a young child the heat requirements per kilogramme of body weight are nearly three times that of an adult. All this has a practical bearing on the feeding and up- bringing of a child. Sexual differences are discernible from early childhood, but the most conspicuous changes are not apparent until the oncoming of puberty, when profound physio- logical distinctions arise and anatomical changes mark