Tender Years Research Articles

Historical Revisions

An example of an inaccuracy that has been reproduced by successive historians is furnished by the date of birth of Hugh O'Neill, second earl of Tyrone. Cox, Leland, Plowden and Bagwell omit to mention a date. Mitchel implies that O'Neill was born in 1542 or 1543, Meehan in 1539 or 1540, probably on the authority of Peter Lombard, papal archbishop of Armagh in the first quarter of the sixteenm century. Dunlop gives the date as ‘ about 1540 ’ Yet references in the state papers prove conclusively that his birth could not have taken place until about ten years later. In a letter from Cecil to Challoner, written after the death in 1562 of Brian O'Neill, Hugh's elder brother, it is stated that ‘ there is still another brother alive, not yet twelve years old and so a candidate to the Earldom of Tyrone still exists ’. In a letter to Queen Elizabeth, written in 1587, Hugh O'Neill refers to himself as having been ‘ a child of tender years ’ in 1562, when his brother was murdered. In the same year Sir Henry Sidney wrote to Walsingham in the following terms: ‘ I had with me the young Baron of Dungannon, Shane's eldest brother's son, whom I had bred in my home from a little boy, then very poor of goods and full feebly friended ’. As Hugh O'Neill crossed to England in 1562, and lived in Sidney's house after that date, the year 1540 is obviously inaccurate. Cecil's evidence shows him to have been about twelve in 1562, which would make the year of his birth 1550, and, as this is supported by the other evidence referred to, we must place his birth a decade later than the year usually given.

Evidence: Witnesses: Competency of Children of Tender Years

Evidence: Witnesses: Competency of Children of Tender Years

IS MASTOIDECTOMY NECESSARY IN YOUNG CHILDREN?

Information instilled during childhood generally persists through life, often to the very end. In tender years, children absorb practically everything that comes within their ken, accepting most of it as fact. Later in life, people have grown so accustomed to the notions thus acquired that they are not in the habit of stopping to question them. They have been present so long that they have become part of the personality. It is thus that prejudices are acquired—yea, the worst prejudices, many of which are never discarded, but are fondly hugged and carried to the grave. The situation of the young physician is somewhat analogous to this for, without any desire to attempt to belittle the medical student whose mind is often both keen and brilliant, the fact remains that medically speaking he is in the childhood stage, in which he saturates himself with knowledge galore, much of

The Relationship of Physics to Aeronautical Research

Aeronautics is a youthful study—a mere Cinderella of the Sciences, distinguished from her sisters by her tender years, by her guileless and impetuous disregard of the pinch of the financial shoe, and by her beauty.That it is Applied Physics is to me the most inspiring definition of engineering; and if this be true for engineering in general, as I think it is, especially true is it of aeronautics. To illustrate the close association of these new studies with the work of physicists, I shall select a few of the more striking results of recent research.Aviation is now entering upon a new and intensely interesting phase—one which will call for every scientific resource at our command. The materials of -construction are changing : wood is giving place to metal. The engine proves ito have most unexpected possibilities ahead of it through the increase of intake pressure; whilst the very lifting structure itself promises to change, for some purposes at least, from linear motion to rotary.

IMBECILE, CRIMINAL, OR BOTH?

The shameless exhibition of insanity successfully pushed as a defense of the crime of murder, followed by the indignant efforts of the accused to be adjudged sane so soon as his insanity plea had served its purpose, may well make the alienist at least cautiously critical of such a line of defense. That there are points, however, where penology and psychiatry are tangent, can hardly be gainsaid. Our social organization is still defective and certain classes are not yet clearly recognized, and so, of course, not provided for. But, it seems to me, our duty lies in the direction of considering these cases from the standpoint of our defective social scheme. It were indeed convenient if the” demi-fous “and” demiresponsables” could be assigned to their proper institutions, when recognized. Whether the habitual criminal be such a one may be another story. The writer was called by his anxious sisters, who wished him declared insane because facing a criminal charge, to examine one, S. C., et. 22, who never had any occupation, save, as the police say, he has always been a “cheap thief.” He is an inveterate smoker of cigarettes; he is about 5 feet 6 inches in height and weighs about 145 pounds, thin-lipped and of shifty looks. His sisters say that his mother was a (left) hemiplegic (and hysterical) for five years before his birth. His family history is otherwise negative. He was an ordinarily healthy baby, and later attended the public school, to the third grade, when he ran away. That his police record began at tender years is evidenced by the following, showing no less than 41 arrests between the ages of 5 and 22 for charges from simple larceny to robbery:

Nature-study Lessons for Primary Grades

DR. C. A. McMuRRY, who has written the introduction to this volume, is one of the chief recognised authorities in America on elementary scientific education, and, indeed, on elementary education in general, and since he has probably read the proofs and given a general approval to the text, the work may be regarded as being written by one having authority. The plan of the work is to take a series of animals and plants and to show how the lessons to be learnt from them may be taught to pupils of tender years, or rather how the pupils may be trained to find out the meaning of the lessons for themselves. Having-gained the confidence and attracted the interest of the pupils, the first object of the teacher should be to endeavour to foster and develop their own powers of observation and of drawing simple conclusions from such observations; and for this purpose the method adopted in the volume seems admirably adapted. Although it is not expected that all teachers will select the same objects for their texts, or that they should all follow by any means the same method of instructing, there can be no doubt of the advantage of having a list of those objects which appear most suitable for the purpose, and also of the benefits which younger teachers may derive from a perusal of the manner in which a more experienced member of their body handles her subject. Nature-study Lessons for Primary Grades. By L. B. McMurry. Pp. xi + 191. (New York: The Macmillan Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1905.) Price 2s. 6d. net.

Negligence. Explosives. Children of Tender Years

Negligence. Explosives. Children of Tender Years

Beautiful Birds

MR. SELOUS' volume, in spite of its pleasant-looking green cover, numerous though indifferent plates, and text cheerfully varied with italics, is in reality no more than an unduly swollen tract. It is necessary to say this at once, and with emphasis, lest the unwary buyer of bird books should add this volume to his library under the impression that he was adding a useful and chatty account of humming-birds and birds of paradise. The volume is, in fact, an example of what is known in the animal world as “aggressive mimicry.” Under the guise of a pleasing discourse upon some of the more striking among many beautiful birds, the author really provides the public with not much more than a simple attack upon the wearing of birds' plumes by ladies. We have not the least objection to Mr. Selous' views in this matter, or to the expression of them. But he might surely have found one of those numerous journals which delight in denunciatory declamation rather than in adherence to frigid fact, and into its sympathetic columns have poured his feelings of horror at feminine inhumanity. Then no one would have been deceived about the matter, as some possibly may be. Mr. Selous builds upon a minimum of zoological fact a large super structure of curiously agitated, almost hysterical, ethics. The book is, in its form, addressed to a hypothetical and female infant of tender years who is urged to persecute her mother and female relatives generally until they promise never to wear birds' feathers in their hats, as, for instance—“You must remind her of it from time to time (‘remember mother you promised’), when you hear her talking about getting a new hat. And when you have made her promise about herself then you must make her promise never to let you wear a hat of that sort…. And if you have a sister very much older than yourself, &c, &c.“ With such observations the chapters are liberally sown and nearly invariably conclude; it is, moreover, at least once added that the mother and sisters in question had better read this particular volume. We sincerely hope that they won't take this broad and business-like hint; for even from the point of view of a “humani-tarian” (we must use inverted commas as there is no necessary connection between the use and meaning of this term) Mr. Selous is unworthy of praise. Why should he select the “beautiful birds” only, and by implication condone the massacre of birds that have not that advantage?

ONLY A BABY TOOTH.

Reference is not here made to any particular baby tooth, nor to any particular baby's tooth, but only to the deciduous or temporary teeth as a class. Interest in the subject which furnishes the topic of this treatise antedates, considerably, the discovery of the<i>first</i>baby's<i>first</i>tooth by the proud new parents. Its importance does not begin nor end here, nor is it confined within the limits of baby's and childhood's tender years, as we expect to prove. An extended theoretic discussion of the proper treatment and best material for filling roots and crown of a devitalized molar would come as far short of interesting our medical brethren as would a learned paper on typhoid fever and its treatment the dental Section of this assembly, therefore, this homely topic shall be given a plain, practical but limited consideration. ''Only a baby tooth'' is expressive of insignificance, but not in

Air, Food and Exercises; an Essay on the Predisposing Causes of Disease

THE book under review is an amplification of papers contributed to the Scalpel during the year 1896. The main proposition elucidated in the essay may, in the words of the author, be said to be this: “that there are three predisposing causes of disease, as there are, conversely, three chief predisposing causes of health, and that these are air, food and exercises.” In the course of his essay, the writer gives his opinion on the subject of heredity, which, he thinks, “counts for very little as a predisposing cause of disease and of health, among adults at least, if not even among persons who have passed the tender years of early childhood.” Heredity is indeed spoken of somewhat contemptuously in the book, and, bracketed with germs, is described as a fetish, “so blindly and superstitiously is it invoked.” In the opinion of the author, five percent, would be a fairer estimate for the hereditary diseases incident to adult humanity than even ten—an estimate previously conceded in the course of the argument. The book is not written for the practitioner, by whom, in fact, many of the opinions and views of the author might be challenged, but for the lay– man and woman, who will find in it many hints as to the diet and physical exercise of the body, which may be calculated to make easier the task of keeping the body in a state of health. Being intended for the perusal of the non-professional reader, the work throughout is written in a style which will be easily understood by all.

OBSERVATIONS ON ISOLATED CASES OF DIPHTHERIA.Read in the Section on Diseases of Children, at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association.

Diphtheria is a frequent and most destructive disease, a large and familiar outlet of youthful life. Children of tender years are specially susceptible to it, and no condition of life seems to materially influenee the liability to the disease. The rich and the poor, alike, suffer severely from it. Sanitary conditions, as a matter of fact, seem to have little to do with its prevalence. Though most writers characterize it as a filth disease, a view of its history shows that it pays little regard to filthy or cleanly surroundings. Dr. Thursfield's observations as sanitary inspector of a district in England extending over twelve hundred square miles, show the number of fatal cases of diphtheria in the rural portion to be nearly three times that in the urban. Dr. Longstaff at another period, in his report on the Geographical Distribution of Diphtheria in England and Wales, shows that the disease