SURVIVAL OF A PREMATURE SCOTTISH INFANT WEIGHING LESS THAN 1,000 gm IN 1815

Abstract

Even today with the best of pediatric and nursing care, survival of premature infants with a birth weight of about 1,000 gm is precarious. The description below by Dr. John Rodman of Paisley, Scotland, proves that a low birth weight infant could survive without an incubator or any of our contemporary regimens for the care of the such infants.1 Dr. Rodman's report gives a fascinating account of how premature infants were cared for in Scotland more than a century and a half ago. Being employed as accoucheur on the 19th of April 1815, when the mother who had born five children . . . attributed . . . premature labour to fatiguing exertions on the preceding day . . . I had the happiness to deliver her of a living male infant. Not daring to allow the washing of this infant's body, he was speedily wiped and wrapped in flannel, with only an opening in the dress around his mouth, for the admission of air; and by the time the dressing was over, the mother was ready to take him into the warm bed with herself. It is common, if there be much apparent weakness, to feed a child the first twelve hours after birth very frequently, yet, in this instance, although the child was weak, no feeding was attempted till beyond that time; the nourishing heat with the mother in bed was relied on. . . . The child was kept regularly and comfortably warm by the mother and two other females alternately lying in bed with him, for more than two months. . . .