THE DREADFUL CONSEQUENCES OF NOT REMOVING THE CHILD'S HYPERTROPHIED TONSILS AND ADENOIDS—AS VIEWED IN 1915

Abstract

The editorial below published in 1915 in the now defunct Archives of Pediatrics is typical of the prevailing medical attitude at that time toward the putative calamitous effect of hypertrophied tonsils and adenoids. It would seem that everyone must be aware of the deleterious effect of hypertrophied adenoids and tonsils.... It is, however, the fall of the year, the time when the first series of infectious colds runs through the community, when household after household finds one member after another succumbing to sneezing and coryza. The ruggedness gained from months in the country, whose bacteria-free air has permitted a loss of resistance to the germs of the common cold, seems in a day to give place to pallor and weakness. It is now, therefore, that the adenoid question comes bobbing up again after months of retirement, for it is the child with adenoids to whom the first cold of the year comes with greatest injury.... Again, it is the fall of the year, when the schools open. Coming to the schools are hundreds of children, who, through fault of their parents or their physicians, do not come physically fit to profit by the instruction which the schools afford. The school physical examination, which is now so general, detects, among other things, enlarged tonsils, mouth breathing, open mouths, malocclusion, narrow noses, high palatal arches, all bearing a relationship to faulty nasopharyngeal conditions, all lessening in some degree the child's keenness of intellect, retarding him, delaying his mates, and requiring a greater effort on the part of his teachers and a greater cost to the community....