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THE CASE OF THE COUNTERFEIT JAW
1138 Penicillin-resistant
strains, however,
are
having been abandoned by those he becomes inwardly apathetic, though capable of interest and animation on the surface. His roots in home are dying for lack of nourishment, and he is learning to do without them, at the expense of his normal emotional life and growth."
dejection
undoubtedly
very rare, and this fact favours the further investigation of oral penicillin, rather than the expensive aureomycin, as an alternative to sulphadiazine. The results of McVay and Sprunt, therefore, do not suggest that, in the prophylaxis of rheumatic fever, aureomycin is likely to be superior to other bacteriostatic drugs ; but it is probably an effective substitute in patients who are intolerant to sulphadiazine or penicillin.
VISITING CHILDREN IN HOSPITAL EMOTIONAL disturbances in children-bedwetting, temper tantrums, delinquency, and the like-date surprisingly often from a period in hospital ; and there is good evidence that such disturbances are the outcome not of anything that happened to them in the wards, This evidence is but of separation from the mother. so telling that in March of this year the Ministry of Health strongly urged all hospitals to allow daily visiting of children by their parents. They were moved to take this step by the discovery that, in 1952, only 300 out of 1300 hospitals in the country which admit children allowed daily visiting, and that 150 prohibited it altogether.! It is to be hoped that the figures are now very different ; but it is disquieting to learn2 that one management committee at least has rejected by 16 votes to 4 a resolution to introduce the daily visiting of children in hospitals in its group. The chairman, who held that the committee should be guided by the strong request of the Ministry, noted at the outset that, though matrons collectively support daily visiting, doctors are collectively opposed to it. Whether or not this
he
cares
and
a
most
feeling
of
about ;
The child who is cheerful and unconcerned in hospital, and who takes his mother’s coming and going without apparent perturbation, may be storing up trouble which becomes apparent only when he gets home. The child who is disturbed by her visits and shrieks at her departure is in a far more healthy psychological state. For such a child-or indeed for any child, as one member of the hospital management committee pointed out-the parting will be eased if he knows his mother will be back next
day. interesting that another member of the committee, woman, supported the chairman in his view that
It is a
matrons-and nurses too, she said, as well as mothers and other women-are in favour of daily visiting. At one time some doctors held that the nursing staff would never agree to daily visiting ; but this, it seems, was probably a misplaced fear. Having the child’s ultimate well-being in mind, they are ready to tolerate the tears.
THE CASE OF THE COUNTERFEIT JAW IN the history of field anthropology there are a number of awkward discoveries which appear to fit nowhere into any coherent scheme of the relationships of man. Prominent among these is the skull found some forty years ago at Piltdown in Sussex-a skull in which cranial fragments relatively modern in form appeared to be combined with a primitive mandible and dentition. So generalisation holds elsewhere, it was certainly true at peculiar was this combination felt to be that most the meeting where the vote was taken. No fewer than anthropologists reserved judgment. Evolution is not a five doctors spoke against the resolution, most of them tidy subject. However, the lapse of time since the basing their objections on the sort of personal impressions discovery of the skull has brought with it new methods which investigation has shown to be misleading. Thus of estimating the age of such specimens, and thus the the experience of one had led him to believe that the chance of obtaining new information about the Piltdown daily visiting of children is not a good thing ; he had fragments. By a combination of fluorine analysis and seen, he said, too many emotional upsets in the ward estimation of the nitrogen-content Weiner, Oakley, and and the outpatient department. Another, who thought Le Gros Clarkclaim to have shown that the mandible that the mother with a large family at home would and teeth of the Piltdown discoveries are relatively find daily visiting a nightmare, was at once answered modern, and cannot possibly be contemporary with the by a woman member of the committee : such a mother, cranium. But there is more than this. Analysis has she said, can usually find someone to look after the shown that the iron staining of the jaw, in contrast to family while she is away ; and she added a simple that of the cranium, is only superficial, and that the " statement of a complex psychological truth : " If a child on the canine tooth is a thin layer of coating paint-like not see its parents it grows away from them." does substance." It has also been shown experimentally that Another doctor mistakenly argued that daily visiting the morphology of the Piltdown teeth can be closely is more for the sake of the parent than the child. A reproduced by artificially abrading the teeth of a fourth, who had been dumbfounded, he said, by the chimpanzee. expressions of joy and happiness of children in hospital, The suggestion is made, in round terms, that the had evidently been deceived by the superficial unconcern mandible and teeth are part of a deliberate anthropoand cheerfulness which have misled so many. The logical fake designed to mislead expert opinion. The fifth doctor raised the practical objection that children evidence has not yet been discussed in full, but the of parents living near the hospital would be visited more preliminary report is damning enough. If the skull is a often than those whose parents came from a distance, fake, it has been a successful one. From the pages of and that these latter would therefore feel neglected. nearly every elementary book on our forefathers there But if some must be deprived by circumstance, does peers a truculent hairy creature bearing the legend it follow that the rest should be deprived by a hospital Piltdown Man. The suggestion that there never was such rule’? That is an argument that could have some very a creature will be accepted by most authorities with odd conclusions. something akin to relief. The layman may even be Some years ago we reported Miss Anna Freud3 as tempted to say that the anthropologists have only saying, in a memorable speech about the effect of hospital themselves to blame. In this branch of science the facts on the child : are scanty : a tooth, a fragmented limb bone, a battered He lives from day to day, he depends on the evidence skull bone-meagre enough they are for the far-reaching of his senses, and his understanding of the situation is conclusions sometimes based upon them. Yet it is only fragmentary at best. A loving mother who remains absent by the interpretation of such clues that we can expect is a figure whom he is incapable of conceiving ; his own the anthropological study of the ancestry of man to love demands the nearness of the beloved person, and if advance, and till now we would have been unreasonable she withholds herself he lacks the only proof of love which to demand that anthropologists should always suspect he knows and can understand. His outward calm hides every discovery of being an expert forgery. 1. Lancet, 1953, i, 531. 1. Weiner, J. S., Oakley, K. P., Le Gros Clark, W. E. Bull. Brit. 2. East Anglian Times, Nov. 12, 1953. "
3. Lancet, 1949, i, 784.
Mus.
(nat. Hist.), 1953, 2, 141.
strains, however,
are
having been abandoned by those he becomes inwardly apathetic, though capable of interest and animation on the surface. His roots in home are dying for lack of nourishment, and he is learning to do without them, at the expense of his normal emotional life and growth."
dejection
undoubtedly
very rare, and this fact favours the further investigation of oral penicillin, rather than the expensive aureomycin, as an alternative to sulphadiazine. The results of McVay and Sprunt, therefore, do not suggest that, in the prophylaxis of rheumatic fever, aureomycin is likely to be superior to other bacteriostatic drugs ; but it is probably an effective substitute in patients who are intolerant to sulphadiazine or penicillin.
VISITING CHILDREN IN HOSPITAL EMOTIONAL disturbances in children-bedwetting, temper tantrums, delinquency, and the like-date surprisingly often from a period in hospital ; and there is good evidence that such disturbances are the outcome not of anything that happened to them in the wards, This evidence is but of separation from the mother. so telling that in March of this year the Ministry of Health strongly urged all hospitals to allow daily visiting of children by their parents. They were moved to take this step by the discovery that, in 1952, only 300 out of 1300 hospitals in the country which admit children allowed daily visiting, and that 150 prohibited it altogether.! It is to be hoped that the figures are now very different ; but it is disquieting to learn2 that one management committee at least has rejected by 16 votes to 4 a resolution to introduce the daily visiting of children in hospitals in its group. The chairman, who held that the committee should be guided by the strong request of the Ministry, noted at the outset that, though matrons collectively support daily visiting, doctors are collectively opposed to it. Whether or not this
he
cares
and
a
most
feeling
of
about ;
The child who is cheerful and unconcerned in hospital, and who takes his mother’s coming and going without apparent perturbation, may be storing up trouble which becomes apparent only when he gets home. The child who is disturbed by her visits and shrieks at her departure is in a far more healthy psychological state. For such a child-or indeed for any child, as one member of the hospital management committee pointed out-the parting will be eased if he knows his mother will be back next
day. interesting that another member of the committee, woman, supported the chairman in his view that
It is a
matrons-and nurses too, she said, as well as mothers and other women-are in favour of daily visiting. At one time some doctors held that the nursing staff would never agree to daily visiting ; but this, it seems, was probably a misplaced fear. Having the child’s ultimate well-being in mind, they are ready to tolerate the tears.
THE CASE OF THE COUNTERFEIT JAW IN the history of field anthropology there are a number of awkward discoveries which appear to fit nowhere into any coherent scheme of the relationships of man. Prominent among these is the skull found some forty years ago at Piltdown in Sussex-a skull in which cranial fragments relatively modern in form appeared to be combined with a primitive mandible and dentition. So generalisation holds elsewhere, it was certainly true at peculiar was this combination felt to be that most the meeting where the vote was taken. No fewer than anthropologists reserved judgment. Evolution is not a five doctors spoke against the resolution, most of them tidy subject. However, the lapse of time since the basing their objections on the sort of personal impressions discovery of the skull has brought with it new methods which investigation has shown to be misleading. Thus of estimating the age of such specimens, and thus the the experience of one had led him to believe that the chance of obtaining new information about the Piltdown daily visiting of children is not a good thing ; he had fragments. By a combination of fluorine analysis and seen, he said, too many emotional upsets in the ward estimation of the nitrogen-content Weiner, Oakley, and and the outpatient department. Another, who thought Le Gros Clarkclaim to have shown that the mandible that the mother with a large family at home would and teeth of the Piltdown discoveries are relatively find daily visiting a nightmare, was at once answered modern, and cannot possibly be contemporary with the by a woman member of the committee : such a mother, cranium. But there is more than this. Analysis has she said, can usually find someone to look after the shown that the iron staining of the jaw, in contrast to family while she is away ; and she added a simple that of the cranium, is only superficial, and that the " statement of a complex psychological truth : " If a child on the canine tooth is a thin layer of coating paint-like not see its parents it grows away from them." does substance." It has also been shown experimentally that Another doctor mistakenly argued that daily visiting the morphology of the Piltdown teeth can be closely is more for the sake of the parent than the child. A reproduced by artificially abrading the teeth of a fourth, who had been dumbfounded, he said, by the chimpanzee. expressions of joy and happiness of children in hospital, The suggestion is made, in round terms, that the had evidently been deceived by the superficial unconcern mandible and teeth are part of a deliberate anthropoand cheerfulness which have misled so many. The logical fake designed to mislead expert opinion. The fifth doctor raised the practical objection that children evidence has not yet been discussed in full, but the of parents living near the hospital would be visited more preliminary report is damning enough. If the skull is a often than those whose parents came from a distance, fake, it has been a successful one. From the pages of and that these latter would therefore feel neglected. nearly every elementary book on our forefathers there But if some must be deprived by circumstance, does peers a truculent hairy creature bearing the legend it follow that the rest should be deprived by a hospital Piltdown Man. The suggestion that there never was such rule’? That is an argument that could have some very a creature will be accepted by most authorities with odd conclusions. something akin to relief. The layman may even be Some years ago we reported Miss Anna Freud3 as tempted to say that the anthropologists have only saying, in a memorable speech about the effect of hospital themselves to blame. In this branch of science the facts on the child : are scanty : a tooth, a fragmented limb bone, a battered He lives from day to day, he depends on the evidence skull bone-meagre enough they are for the far-reaching of his senses, and his understanding of the situation is conclusions sometimes based upon them. Yet it is only fragmentary at best. A loving mother who remains absent by the interpretation of such clues that we can expect is a figure whom he is incapable of conceiving ; his own the anthropological study of the ancestry of man to love demands the nearness of the beloved person, and if advance, and till now we would have been unreasonable she withholds herself he lacks the only proof of love which to demand that anthropologists should always suspect he knows and can understand. His outward calm hides every discovery of being an expert forgery. 1. Lancet, 1953, i, 531. 1. Weiner, J. S., Oakley, K. P., Le Gros Clark, W. E. Bull. Brit. 2. East Anglian Times, Nov. 12, 1953. "
3. Lancet, 1949, i, 784.
Mus.
(nat. Hist.), 1953, 2, 141.