| Summary: | "Many excellent treatises on the management of infancy already exist; yet few of them are calculated to supply parents with the kind of information which, in their circumstances, is especially needed. Most of those hitherto published, touch briefly upon the general management of early childhood merely as preliminary to an exposition of its diseases; and their perusal by non-professional persons not unfrequently leads to dangerous tampering with the lives of the young. On this account, I cannot but consider them as improper guides for any except medical readers.
Those again which, as intended for the use of mothers, are free from this objection, --even when abounding, as many of item do, in good sense and excellent practical advice, --lose much of their value and usefulness from presenting their rules and admonitions as so many abstract and individual opinions, and omitting to connect them with the physiological laws or principles on which they are based, and according to which their effects are produced. Sensible of these imperfections as detracting from the usefulness, as guides for the non-professional reader, of many works in others respects of great merit, I had almost resolved several years ago to enter upon the preparation of a treatise on a more comprehensive plan, and which should, on the one hand, avoid all descriptions of disease, and on the other, found its precepts, at every possible point, on well ascertained physiological principles.
Under the apprehension, however, of being unable so to simplify the subject as to render it easily intelligible to the general reader, I refrained from putting together the materials which had accumulated on my hands; till at length, encouraged by the very favourable reception of my other works on subjects somewhat analogous, and by the numerous testimonies I received of their practical utility, I set seriously to work, and completed the volume now submitted to the public. In the following pages I have addressed myself chiefly to parents and to the younger and more inexperienced members of the medical profession; but it is not to them alone that the subject ought to prove attractive. The study of infancy, considered even as an element in the history and philosophy of man, altogether apart from the duties which it imposes on the proper guardians of the young, abounds in interest, and is fertile in truths of the highest practical value and importance.
In this point of view, it can scarcely fail to arrest the attention of any thinking and intelligent mind which is once directed to its pursuit"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
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