PEDIATRICS Vol. 55 No. 4 April 1975, pp. 496
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DR. ABRAHAM JACOBI ON THERAPEUTICS OF INFANTS AND CHILDREN

T. E. C. Jr. M.D.

Abraham Jacobi (1830-1919), often called the Father of American Pediatrics, was the first to establish systematic and special clinics for the diseases of children. In 1896 when he wrote the practical note below, drug therapy for infants and children was far from a settled issue.

Therapeutics of infants and children have enjoyed, or suffered from, their fate like "books" and those of adults. They have had their stages between the era of dull and ignorant prescribing and that of impotent and conceited nihilism. But neither a deluge nor an absence of drugs make a physician, when by themselves alone, to the welfare of a single individual or the community. The ailments of children are but rarely complicated, and a single diagnosis tells the whole story. If it be not made, it is perhaps best for the practitioner not to attempt much doctoring and for the patient to be left alone. For, happily, most diseases have a tendency to get well, either completely or partially, and many will run a more favorable course when not meddled with.

This does not mean to say, however, that I discourage treatment even in such ailments as run a typical course extending over a number of days or weeks. On the contrary, I am opposed to the practice—much too common—of those who do not, for instance, wish to interfere with a whooping-cough because it finds its natural termination after several months. This is true, but many of the children find their natural termination also during these months.