The theory and practice of infant feeding, with notes on development
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
(Originally published in 1915. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1915. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
Henry Dwight Chapin was an American pediatrician and social reformer.
Background
Henry Dwight Chapin was born on February 4, 1857 in Steubenville, Ohio, United States. He was the second of five sons of Henry Barton Chapin and Harriet Ann (Smith) Chapin. Of New England Puritan stock, he was descended from Deacon Samuel Chapin, who emigrated from England around 1640 and settled in Springfield, Massachussets His father, born in Rochester, and a graduate of Yale, was a Presbyterian minister. Young Chapin grew up chiefly in Trenton, where his father held a pastorate from 1858 to 1866.
Education
He attended the Chapin Collegiate School for Boys, of which his father was principal from 1867 to 1903. In 1877, with a B. S. from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), Chapin began the study of medicine, probably spending much of the next two years with Dr. Stephen Smith, his preceptor. He entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1879, completed the two brief lecture terms then required, and received the M. D. degree in 1881.
Career
After serving internships, it is said, at Bellevue Hospital and at the leper colony on Ward's Island in New York Harbor, he entered practice in 1884. In 1885 Chapin began teaching a course in the diseases of children at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital, and the next year was appointed professor in that subject both at the Post-Graduate School and at the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Though he held the second post only until 1890, he retained the first until his retirement in 1920. At the hospital he was, at various times, director of diseases of children, supervising physician of the Babies' Ward, and a member of the board of directors. Using ward rounds, discussion, and the case method, Chapin attained a reputation for excellence as a teacher. His experience at the Post-Graduate Hospital with patients from the densely populated tenements of the Lower East Side alerted him to the special problems of nutrition and health among the children of the poor. In 1890 he launched a hospital social service at the Babies' Ward--one of the pioneer efforts of this kind--at first using volunteers experienced in social work and then, a few years later, employing trained nurses, who visited former patients, helping to implement the doctor's instructions (translated into German or Italian where necessary), and reported on home conditions that might affect medical treatment. In one of his earliest papers on social problems, Chapin stated his conviction that "Economic laws are really the outcome of physiological laws and conditions, " and that society should therefore "strive to atone for its fearful inequalities, not by division and almsgiving, but by strengthening the weak for more successful effort". Essential to this aim was proper early nourishment. He emphasized the importance of milk, not only for its nutritive value but also because he believed it played a significant role in the development of the digestive system. He therefore advocated that premature and sickly babies, if they could not be breast-fed, should be given a mixture that approximated as closely as possible the chemical constitution of maternal milk. When his experiments convinced him that no combination of ingredients could precisely duplicate these qualities, he established, in 1921, one of the early citywide breast-milk collection stations, conducted under the auspices of the Children's Welfare Federation of New York. Out of this same zeal for proper early nourishment evolved several of Chapin's most significant contributions to infant metabolism and nutrition, including recognition of the inability of infants to digest protein, and of the intestinal origin of acidosis. His technical writings include The Theory and Practice of Infant Feeding (1902) and Diseases of Infants and Children (1909), with Godfrey R. Pisek, which went through eight editions. A major concern of Chapin's life was the welfare of neglected infants and children. His work in various hospitals in the New York area convinced him that prolonged institutionalization of children was harmful, often fatal, and he campaigned vigorously to support his views. Abraham Jacobi had earlier recognized the disease of "hospitalism"--the near-100 percent mortality among young patients detained on the wards indefinitely after recovery from acute illness--and had lost his staff position by advocating boarding out instead. Unlike the fiery Jacobi, Chapin gained acceptance for the idea of foster homes. In 1902 he founded the Speedwell Society, an organization that placed young inmates of hospitals and settlement houses in private homes, initially in Morristown. Contributions to the society provided milk, board, clothing, and "extras" for the children and paid the salaries of a physician and nurse who regularly visited each participating household. This system afforded a temporary family environment for more than 800 young convalescents in its first eight years, and, with additional units in Yonkers, New Rochelle, towns on Long Island, and other healthful areas outside New York City, by 1940 had cared for some 20, 000 children. All told, Chapin and his wife arranged 1, 700 adoptions and indirectly found homes for some 2, 000 other children, in addition to the British babies placed in American homes through Chapin's work as a member of the British-American Adoption Commission after World War I. Always seeking ways to better the human condition, Chapin read widely among contemporary social philosophers, being deeply influenced by Herbert Spencer and John Fiske, and by his own friend and classmate, Henry Fairfield Osborn. Chapin advocated limited eugenics, particularly by quarantine of the feebleminded; but he believed that the prolonged period of infancy and growth in human beings made their heredity more malleable than that of lower animals, an optimistic philosophy he expressed most fully in Vital Questions (1905), Health First: The Fine Art of Living (1917), and Heredity and Child Culture (1922). His interest in education impelled him to cooperate in improving the public schools, and in 1895 he served on the advisory council of the Public Education Association of New York City, together with Felix Adler and five other reform-minded citizens led by Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia. Although his bright eyes, erect carriage, and springy step long gave Chapin the appearance of a young man whose thick hair was prematurely white, severe arteriosclerosis forced his gradual retirement in the late 1920's. By 1931 he had given up his New York City office, and he eventually surrendered even the pleasures of his beloved Century Association which, together with travel, vintage wines, and playing the violin, constituted the major indulgences allowed by the puritan conscience that dictated a life of service.
(Originally published in 1915. This volume from the Cornel...)
Connections
On June 1, 1907, at the age of fifty, Chapin married Alice Delafield, the daughter of an Episcopal clergyman. To their disappointment, they had no children, but they devoted themselves to the welfare of foundlings. In 1910 they took in a baby girl abandoned in Central Park, the first of ninety-eight such infants to be nurtured in their home before being given to adoptive parents.