For whom no bell tolled

2021 ◽  
pp. 391-396
Author(s):  
Michael Obladen

This chapter describes infant burials and their history. When cities were established in Mesopotamia in the fifth millennium b.c.e., particular burial places evolved: adults and older children were interred in cemeteries outside the dwelling sites, infants were disposed of within their natal homes. On the Greek island of Astypalaia, a specific cemetery for newborns was used from 750 b.c.e. At the Athenian Agora, 449 fetal and neonatal skeletons were uncovered in a well. In Roman Italy, deceased infants were mostly disposed of in mass graves. From the 5th century, burial in church-associated cemeteries became the usual pattern in Anglo-Saxon Britain. Funeral rites included viewing of the deceased, prayer and religious service, procession to the gravesite, and burial. For deceased newborn infants, the adult rite was often practised in a simplified form. During the 19th century, burial clubs providing funds for funeral expenses were abused to make money from infanticide. The maintenance of unique mortuary practices lasting millennia suggests that newborns, especially when preterm or malformed, were considered unfinished, and of little societal importance.

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 534-543
Author(s):  
LYTT I. GARDNER

Three cases of newborn tetany are described, pointing out the relationship between dietary phosphate load and the manifestations of this disease. An additional three newborn infants are described who showed other symptomatology than tetany in association with dietary phosphate load. [See Table 1 in Source Pdf]. Data concerning diet, cause of death and degree of parathyroid hyperplasia are tabulated in eight newborns who were found to have parathyroid hyperplasia at autopsy. Similar data are tabulated on eight newborns and five older children who were found to have normal parathyroid glands at autopsy. Several other factors possibly involved in newborn tetany and newborn parathyroid hyperplasia are discussed. The importance of measuring serum inorganic P in the differential diagnosis of neonatal distress is pointed out.


2017 ◽  
Vol 07 (01) ◽  
pp. e38-e41
Author(s):  
P. Dahlem ◽  
P. Biggar

AbstractMortality in newborn infants and children with sepsis is high with survival rates of generally more than 50% in recent studies. Longitudinal follow-up studies have the potential to reveal short-term and lifelong physical, mental, and psychological sequelae. Although no comprehensive follow-up research has yet been performed, a small number of follow-up studies have shown that there is a considerable impact on the patients' lives and their families after hospital discharge. Health-related quality of life also seems to be affected; however, it does not correlate with severity of sepsis or handicap per se. Prematurely born infants, who can develop sequelae directly attributable to prematurity and its consequences, suffer differently from sepsis-related lifelong sequelae compared with older children. Fortunately, time may heal some wounds due to the effect of growth in children. In future, large centers should establish structural follow-up programs for clinical and research purposes to learn more about the needs of affected children and their families.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. A72-A72

. . .many newborn infants do not receive the same consideration that older children or adults receive in an intensive care unit. Many premature infants are subjected to hundreds of heels or finger punctures, have chest tubes inserted and removed, have catheters sutured to their umbilical stump, and undergo intubation, all without receiving any analgesic or sedative. This is not humane and may even be unsafe.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
pp. 613-619
Author(s):  
Charles A. Stanley ◽  
Endla K. Anday ◽  
Lester Baker ◽  
Maria Delivoria-Papadopolous

To examine why newborn infants frequently cannot maintain adequate levels of plasma glucose in the interval between delivery and the time they are first fed, circulating metabolic fuel and regulatory hormone concentrations were determined in 44 healthy infants at the end of an eight-hour postnatal fast. Plasma glucose fell below 40 mg/100 ml prior to eight hours in four of 24 term-appropriate-for-gestational-age (AGA), two of nine preterm-AGA, five of six term-small-for-gestational-age (SGA), and three of five preterm-SGA infants. Fuel and hormone patterns in the premature and SGA infants were not different from those found in term-AGA infants. Results in these neonates differed in two areas from the response to fasting seen later in life. In fasted term-AGA infants, ketones were low (β-hydroxybutyrate 0.29 ± 0.04 mM/liter) despite elevated concentrations of fatty acid precursors (1.4 ± 0.07 mM/liter), and the group of infants studied failed to demonstrate the increase in plasma ketones with lower glucose levels (r = +.23, P = .07) which is found in older children. Levels of glucose precursors were two to three times higher in term-AGA infants (lactate 2.9 ± 0.2 mM/liter; alanine 0.48 ± 0.02 mM/liter) than levels found beyond the neonatal period and, in contrast to older children and adults, were not diminished in infants with lower plasma glucose (lactate, r = -.28, P = .035; alanine, r = -.33, P = .02). These differences between the responses to postnatal fasting and those seen beyond the neonatal period suggest that the capacity for both hepatic ketone synthesis and gluconeogenesis is not fully developed at birth.


1982 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 1220-1227 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. Taussig ◽  
L. I. Landau ◽  
S. Godfrey ◽  
I. Arad

Maximal flows at functional residual capacity (VmaxFRC) from partial expiratory flow-volume (PEFV) curves (achieved with rapid compression of the chest) were obtained on 11 healthy newborn babies. Mean VmaxFRC, size corrected by dividing absolute values by measured thoracic gas volume, was 1.90 TGV's/s. Specific upstream conductances were high, and the cross-sectional area of the flow-limiting segment was estimated to be approximately 0.30 cm2 in the three infants on whom recoil pressures at FRC were also measured. The cross-sectional area of the major bronchi in the neonate is approximately 0.26–0.30 cm2. PEFV curves were convex to the volume axis. Many of the neonates increased their flows while breathing a helium-oxygen gas mixture. These results suggest 1) size-corrected flows are higher in the neonate than in older children or adults; 2) the site of the flow-limiting segment at FRC during maximal expiratory maneuvers is in large proximal airways, similar to the adult; and 3) the relationship of airway size to parenchymal size may be similar in neonates and adults or, in fact, airways may be larger, relative to parenchyma, in neonates. These physiological data do not support the hypothesis, based on pathological studies, that peripheral airways are disproportionately smaller (when compared with central airways) in infants than in adults.


2018 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don K. Nakayama

Evolving from the development of heart-lung machines for open-heart surgery, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation has reemerged as a rescue modality for patients with acute respiratory failure that cannot be supported by conventional modes of ventilation. The history of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation begins with the discovery of heparin, fundamental to the success of extracorporeal circulation and membrane lungs. Engineers and scientists created suitable artificial membranes that allowed gas exchange while keeping gas and blood phases separate. Special pumps circulated blood through the devices and into patients without damage to delicate red cells and denaturing plasma. Initial attempts in adults ended in failure, but Robert Bartlett, first at Loma Linda, CA, then at Ann Arbor, MI, succeeded in applying the technology in newborn infants with persistent pulmonary hypertension. Preserved in the critical care of infants, the technology in time could be reapplied in the life support of older children and adults.


Prospects ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 177-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilson J. Moses

Frederick Douglass may or may not have been the greatest African American abolitionist and orator of the 19th Century, but he was certainly the most accomplished master of self-projection. His autobiographical writings demonstrate the genius with which he seized and manipulated mainstream American symbols and values. By appropriating the Euro-American myth of the self-made man, Douglass guaranteed that his struggle would be canonized, not only within an African American tradition, but within the traditions of the mainstream as well. He manipulated the rhetoric of Anglo-Saxon manhood as skillfully as did any of his white contemporaries, including such master manipulators as Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Phineas T. Barnum. I mention Douglass along with these wily exemplars of American showmanship, not because I want to drag out embarrassing cliches about making heroes more human, but in order to address the truly monumental nature of Douglass's accomplishments. Douglass, like Lincoln, Emerson, and Barnum, was abundantly endowed with the spiderish craft and foxlike cunning that are often marks of self-made men.


2001 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-88
Author(s):  
Chang Huai-Chen

As an Oriental, born and raised in Taiwan in strict conformity to the precepts of Buddhist and Confucian ethical patterns for human behaviour and who has spent most of her life in active business throughout the Far East, I would like to say in the first place that China’s contact with the West since the first half of the 19th century is a story full of disturbances. The slow process of adaptation and adjustment of China to the new situation created by Western aggressions was quite haphazard since China’s solid cultural self-consciousness made it underestimate the significance of the impact from the West, and particularly the impact emanating from the Anglo-Saxon part of the world.


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