Abstract
AT a meeting of the Folk-Lore Society on January 20, Dr. J. D. Rolleston read a paper on the folk-lore of children's diseases. The field is extensive, since it covers the popular conceptions of the acute exanthemata and other infectious diseases, especially whooping cough and diphtheria, venereal infections, cardiac, respiratory, alimentary disorders and isolated diseases, especially erfuresis, infantile convulsions, rickets, hernia and the supposed effects of the 'evil eye'. As regards causation, belief in the doctrine of maternal impressions is still far from extinct, although there is no scientific foundation for such a view. The recognition of astrology by orthodox medical practitioners survived until the eighteenth century, as was shown by Mead's work. The visitation of the 'evil eye' also accounted in popular estimation for many diseases, especially in countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Although a vast number of more or less irrational and inexplicable beliefs were connected with the newborn period, comparatively few of them were of medical interest. Dentition, like menstruation and pregnancy, is a normal process, and was much less frequently the cause of disease than was popularly supposed, especially by mothers who were liable to regard any of their infants' ailments as due to this cause. In like manner, tongue-tie, though often alleged by a mother to account for her child's inability to take the breast, was usually non-existent. The belief in the superstition that venereal disease could be cured by transfer to healthy young virgins of either sex was still prevalent, and was one of the chief causes of acquired syphilis or gonorrhœa in children. Although in other departments of medical folk-lore, especially dermatology, ophthalmology and otology, prophylaxis has received much less attention from the folk than curative treatment, in the case of children's diseases, much more importance seems to have been given to prevention than in other branches of folk-medicine. Examples of the kind were the use of salt for guarding the newborn against evil demons and evil influences, the use of amulets and the administration of coral in the mother's milk.
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Folk-Lore of Children's Diseases. Nature 151, 193 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151193b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151193b0