Growth and Development of the Child, Vol. 4: Appraisement of the Child; I. Mental Status; II. Physical Status (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Growth and Development of the Child, Vol. 4:...)
Excerpt from Growth and Development of the Child, Vol. 4: Appraisement of the Child; I. Mental Status; II. Physical Status
Economic Rating by School Superintendent Appraisal on the Ba31s Of Rent Cultural Status Due to Parental Origin Cleanliness.
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Kenneth Daniel Blackfan was an American educator and pediatrician. He served as Thomas Morgan Rotch Professor of Pediatrics and physician-in-chief at the Boston Children's Hospital
Background
Kenneth Blackfan was born on September 9, 1883, in Cambridge, New York, the oldest of three children of Harry Smith Blackfan and his wife, Estella Chase. Both his father and his grandfather were physicians, descended from early colonists of Pennsylvania.
Education
Young Blackfan graduated from the local high school in 1901 and then entered the Albany Medical College, receiving the M. D. degree in 1905. As a third-year medical student Blackfan came under the influence of Richard Mills Pearce, the newly appointed professor of pathology and bacteriology, who took him into his laboratory the following summer and aroused in him an enthusiasm for exploring the frontiers of scientific medicine
Career
After graduation Blackfan remained for a year as Pearce's assistant and then returned to Cambridge to take up general practice with his father. Frequent visits and discussions with Pearce, a summer resident at nearby Dorset, Vermont, finally persuaded Blackfan in 1909 to leave general practice and seek special training. Having become interested in work with children, he went to Philadelphia, armed with letters from Pearce to two outstanding pediatricians and teachers, David L. Edsall and Samuel M. Hamill, and through their influence was appointed resident-in-charge under Hamill at the St. Vincent de Paul Foundling Hospital. In the next two years Blackfan acquired a reputation as an outstanding student of pediatrics, and in 1911 he accepted a residency under John Howland, professor of pediatrics in the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. A year later, when Howland was appointed head of the department of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital, Blackfan joined him in Baltimore as his resident physician at the hospital's Harriet Lane Home, a recently built unit for infants and children.
The appointment at that time was a long-term assistantship to the chief of pediatrics, with great responsibilities for the care of patients and the teaching of students and house officers, as well as for dealing with any problems that developed. Kenneth Blackfan was ideally suited for this multifaceted position. Children and parents adored him, and nurses and young doctors respected him. He was never impatient or inattentive with students, never raised his voice, and was always logical. He advocated close cooperation between the physician and the laboratory staff, and insisted that each child should be cared for as an individual whose needs should come before the demands of hospital and teaching routine. Blackfan remained in Baltimore for eight years, becoming instructor in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Medical School (1913 - 1917), associate (1917 - 1919), and associate professor (1919 - 1920). In the group of outstanding young pediatricians then at Hopkins, he was recognized as the leading clinician and teacher.
During the latter years of World War I, when most of the staff were in the armed forces, Blackfan also carried most of the burden of patient care and departmental management. He held a commission as lieutenant but was kept from active service by long-standing trifacial neuralgia, a painful affliction which he withstood with silent fortitude through the years. Blackfan left Baltimore in 1920 to accept an appointment as professor of pediatrics and chief of the Children's Hospital at the University of Cincinnati. Three years later he moved to the Harvard Medical School to become Thomas Morgan Rotch Professor of Pediatrics and physician-in-chief at the Boston Children's Hospital.
Here Blackfan found full scope for his talents as administrator, diplomat, physician, and teacher. He promoted closer cooperation between his pediatric department and the hospital's two other independent services, general surgery and orthopedic surgery, and won the support of qualified local pediatricians by inviting them to accept teaching and service positions in the hospital. He established closer relations with the Boston Lying-In Hospital, to provide better care for infants ailing at birth, and organized a number of special clinics for the treatment of children suffering from heart abnormalities and from such illnesses as diabetes, rheumatic fever, and celiac disease. He emphasized the importance of bacteriological and immunological research in treating the diseases of children and, with the financial help of the medical school, developed a notable research laboratory under the active leadership of James L. Gamble, an old friend from Johns Hopkins.
In the later years of his life his health declined, and after an operation for hyperplastic disease in the spring of 1941, he took a sabbatical year and started south, planning to spend the winter. Visiting in Louisville on the way, he died, at the age of fifty-eight, of a malignant brain tumor. He was buried in Woodlands Cemetery, Cambridge, New York.
Blackfan was president of the American Pediatric Society in 1937-1938.
Personality
Blackfan was slight of build, gentle and soft-spoken, modest but firm.
Connections
On August 15, 1920, Blackfan married Lulie Henry (Anderson) Bridges of Louisville, Kentucky, a widow with one son, Turner Anderson; Blackfan himself had no children.