FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN
The Child
in
Human Progress
By
George Henry Payne
With a Foreword by
A. Jacobi, M.D., LL.D.
With 40 Illustrations
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1916
Copyright, 1916
BY
GEORGE HENRY PAYNE
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
FOREWORD
THIS is a new sort of book, and unique. Thatis why I look upon the permission to writea brief preface for it as a rare privilege. Writingson children are frequent. When, in 1875, Icontributed, for Karl Gerhardt’s immense Handbuch,my Hygiene of the Child, I quoted sevenhundred treatises or pamphlets on that subject.There are now at least seven thousand of the kind,and the number of text-books on the diseasesof children and infants do no longer lead a pardonable,rarely a laudable, existence. A few monographson special subjects, or modern publications,as Erich Wulffen’s The Child: His Nature andDegeneration (Berlin, 1913), or the two largeanthropological volumes by H. Ploss, The Childin the Customs and Morals of Nations (third editionby B. Renz, 1911), are praiseworthy examplesof useful books. But while these are instructivethey do not rouse historical interest.
Indeed, the history of the child has been grosslyneglected. The epoch-making works of Rosenstein,Charles West, Rilliet and Barthez, andKarl Gerhardt contain no history. The work ofPuschmann (Neuberger and Pagel) fills twentypages with the history of the child in a text ofvthree thousand pages relating to the history ofmedicine. Altogether our country has been disrespectfulto its best possessions, viz., the children.There was until a few decades ago not even aprofessional teaching of the children’s diseasesin our medical schools. A regular chair wasestablished in 1860 (New York Medical College),—itlasted for a few years only. The second wasin 1898 (Harvard). There were few child’shospitals or wards in hospitals until a few yearsago, even in the largest cities. Society, law,humanitarianism did not mind children. It isonly a few months that an official publication in ourdemocratic country carried the title; “Is There aNeed of a Child Labour Law?” and our civilizationwas humbled by medical discussion of the advisabilityof killing the deformed or unpromisingnew-born. It seems to take a long time beforethis republic of ours begins to work out of the rutsof semi-barbarism. And now, at last, there is abook to supply our wants.
Laymen have advanced ahead of the medicalprofession. Christ and the Stoics, the clergy andthe public opinion of the Crusades and the Christiansentiments of the Mediæval Church, aye, thegreat slaughterer and revolutionary reformer,Napoleon, have called the children under theirprotection and benefactions.
A vast amount of study relating to primarypopulaces and nations in gradual developmentwas required to learn the history of the child.viWithout the history of the child there cannot