Weather, geography, and vehicle-related hyperthermia in children.

Vehicle-related hyperthermia is an unfortunate tragedy that leads to the accidental deaths of children each year. This research utilizes the most extensive dataset of child vehicle-related hyperthermia deaths in the United States, including 414 deaths between 1998 and 2008. Deaths follow a seasonal pattern, with a peak in July and no deaths in December or January. Also, deaths occurred over a wide range of temperature and radiation levels and across virtually all regions, although most of them took place across the southern United States. In particular, the Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, and Las Vegas metropolitan areas had the greatest number of deaths. We utilize our vehicle hyperthermia index (vhi) to compare expected deaths versus actual deaths in a metropolitan area, based on the number of children in the area who are under the age of five and on the frequency of hot days in the area. The vhi indicates that the Memphis, West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, and Las Vegas metropolitan areas are the most dangerous places for vehicle-related hyperthermia. We conclude by discussing several recommendations with public health policy implications.

Drawing cure: children's drawings as a psychoanalytic instrument.

This essay deals with the special case of drawings as psychoanalytical instruments. It aims at a theoretical understanding of the specific contribution made by children's drawings as a medium of the psychical. In the influential play technique developed by Melanie Klein, drawing continuously interacts with other symptomatic (play) actions. Nonetheless, specific functions of drawing within the play technique can be identified. The essay will discuss four crucial aspects in-depth: 1) the strengthening of the analysis's recursivity associated with the graphic artifact; 2) the opening of the analytic process facilitated by drawing; 3) the creation of a genuinely graphic mode of producing meaning that allows the child to develop a "theory" of the workings of his own psychic apparatus; and 4) the new possibilities of symbolization associated with the latter. In contrast to classical definitions of the psychological instrument, the child's drawing is a weakly structured tool that does not serve to reproduce psychic processes in an artificial, controlled setting. The introduction of drawing into the psychoanalytic cure is by no means interested in replaying past events, but in producing events suited to effecting a transformation of the synchronic structures of the unconscious.

[19th-century medical treatment of childhood diseases]. / Dziewietnastowieczne srodki medyczne wykorzystywane w terapii chorób dzieciecych.

In the 19th century, illnesses, including those of children, were treated at home. That pertained to urban as well as rural children alike. In the impoverished Polish countryside, medical treatment was largely confined to the folk-medicine practices that had been passed down from one generation to another. In rural villages and small towns, where doctors of medicine were few and far between, the parents of sick children would seek the help of folk healers or simply older women who made use of various herbal remedies. Such treatment was of a symptom-relieving nature and therefore affected the young patient's entire system. Children were also treated in their homes and family circles in cities. One can even distinguish a characteristic form of therapy which might be referred to as home medicine. It made use of a variety of therapeutic methods carried out in a domestic setting by physicians or parents. Usually those methods were based on traditional folk superstitions, additionally bolstered by rational premises. Generally accessible means, not only herbs but also diets, hydrotherapy, blood-letting and pharmacological preparations were used to treat sick children at home.

["Diary of health of every estate" and children's issues]. / "Dziennik zdrowi dla wszystkich stanów" a problematyka dziecieca.

L. Lafontaine's "Diary of Health for Every Estate" including children's issues was being published from 1801 to 1802. It was the first Polish magazine addressed to the whole society. In its author's opinion this magazine was to propagate rules of hygiene, sanitary education and inform about methods of proceeding in different cases. Lafontaine devoted a lot of attention to sickness affecting mostly the poor and uneducated. He was the first to mention the problem of sick children. In articles, he refer to naturalism and Locke's and Rousseau's ideas. He mentioned and described defects, symptoms and children's illnesses from birth till adult. He talked over rules of physical behaviour and indispensable remedies for treatment in home. He was the man of merit in trying standardization of medical onomastics creating basis to develop independent paediatrics science.

A celebration of 100 years' achievement in child health.

This, the second of a two-part article, will reflect upon the gains made in the health and welfare of children within the UK over the last 50 years of the 20th century. It will show how government reforms covering health, welfare, and education have continued to improve all aspects of children's lives. It will also show how nursing, midwifery, and health visiting have tried to continue to meet the changing needs of children and their families. Lastly, it will highlight the increasing rate of change during this time and predict what may await children and young people in the first part of the new millennium.

Vitamin A as "anti-infective" therapy, 1920-1940.

In the last fifteen years, a large series of controlled clinical trials showed that vitamin A supplementation reduces morbidity and mortality of children in developing countries. It is less well known that vitamin A underwent two decades of intense clinical investigation prior to World War II. In the 1920s, a theory emerged that vitamin A could be used in "anti-infective" therapy. This idea, largely championed by Edward Mellanby, led to a series of at least 30 trials to determine whether vitamin A--usually supplied in the form of cod-liver oil--could reduce the morbidity and mortality of respiratory disease, measles, puerperal sepsis, and other infections. The early studies generally lacked such innovations known to the modern controlled clinical trial such as randomization, masking, sample size and power calculations, and placebo controls. Results of the early trials were mixed, but the pharmaceutical industry emphasized the positive results in their advertising to the public. With the advent of the sulfa antibiotics for treatment of infections, scientific interest in vitamin A as "anti-infective" therapy waned. Recent controlled clinical trials of vitamin A from the last 15 y follow a tradition of investigation that began largely in the 1920s.

[Malediction and healing of mothers and children reflected in Hungarian witch-trial acts]. / Az anyákkal és a kisgyermekekkel kapcsolatos rontások és gyógyítások a magyarországi boszorkány-periratok tukrében.

The witch-trials of the 17th and 18th centuries expressed special aspects of the religious perceptions and atmosphere of the society all over in Europe (so in Hungary as well). Documents of this colourful social notion, i.e. the records and reports of the trials, are published here together with an investigation of the processes. The author chose those cases which were related to the conjectured bewitching and magical curing of mothers and young babies. This paper provides new approaches for both ethnography and medical history. The defenceless position of pregnant women against diseases always gave way for allegations, that when they became actually ill, it was someone who had cast a spell on them. There are different sorts of examples from cases that describe simpler symptoms to more extreme ones, which sometimes label almost appalled and even horrified mental and body pains of the patients. There are processes in which delactation is attributed to bewitching. This reflects the deep fear of the mother, since lack of milk easily ended with the death of the baby in those days. Another widely accepted fact was that the puerpera could attract the attention of diabolical, satanic creatures and people. The excruciating pains and the haunting of these women also appear often in the documents. Their contrasting, reverse desires and determined passions laid behind the induced abortions and the curing of infertility. Sometimes, in the latter, magical love stimulants were used. Probably, it was owing to the presumed defenceless of babies against evil forces that the inquiries of seduction occupy a strikingly big part in the documents. Sometimes parents could not produce any reliable explanation of the unpredictable illness of their child. In cases of falling into fire, trismus (lockjaw), limb deformation, or complete somatopsychic reduction they were led to suppose that it had been caused by transcendental powers. Almost each document mentions such instances. ...