PEDIATRICS Vol. 1 No. 3 March 1948, pp. 331-336
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DEVELOPMENTAL PEDIATRICS: ITS TASK AND POSSIBILITIES

ARNOLD GESELL M.D.

SHORTLY after the American Board of Pediatrics was established in 1935, a basic requirement in Growth and Development was set up for specialty certification. When the medical history of the 20th century is written, we know this formal action will be regarded as a uniquely important event in the evolution of clinical medicine. Already we can see that a clinical science of development is in the making, and that the hygiene of the growing child is being envisaged in the dynamics of his growth. (We shall use the terms growth and development interchangeably for they are virtually synonymous.) Health is a somewhat static idea, unless by health we mean that condition which promotes optimal development.

Pediatrics is distinctive among all the specialties in three ways:

1.It is a specialty of general medicine.

2.It is directed to an age sector of life, rather than to an organ system.

3.It is basically interested in normality as well as disease.

Developmental Pediatrics is a form of clinical medicine which is systematically concerned with the diagnosis and supervision of child development, normal and abnormal.

Doctrine of Development

Development is a very usable concept—both for theoretic and for practical purposes. It is a unifying concept. It applies with equal force to body and mind. It resolves the false dualisms of psyche and soma. It also helps to resolve artificial distinctions between heredity and environment; between normal and abnormal; between structure and function. Development is an integrating concept. In fact, it is development which keeps the child from falling apart under the disrupting stress of excessive medical specialization.

Every newborn child traverses an indivisible, continuous cycle of growth. And for that very reason, the child remains the most cohesive force for the maintenance of family life in our democratic culture. The practicing pediatrician instinctively thinks of the child not only as the end product of eons of evolution, but also as a most important member of a family group; and by the way, also as the citizen of the future.




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