Word: bakwin
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Dates: during 1945-1945
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...reputable doctor who agrees with Proust-Dr. Harry Bakwin, associate professor of pediatrics at New York University's College of Medicine-has drawn a shocking bill of particulars against some of medicine's modern fads. This children's specialist thinks there are far too many operations on children, too much hospitalization, too many inhuman rules about care and feeding. In the New England Journal of Medicine he states his case...
...association found little rhyme or reason in the doctors' decisions.* Dr. Bakwin seconds the association's conclusion that the current craze for tonsil removal "represents in the main a useless ' expenditure of time, effort and money." Further, he considers it responsible for many cases of pneumonia, bulbar poliomyelitis, deaths from overdoses of anesthetics (80 a year) and children's neuroses...
Some other major medical "errors": examination of children's ears with otoscopes, also surgical puncturing of their eardrums (responsible for many ear infections), mineral oil nose drops (they may cause pneumonia), premature attempts at straightening teeth. Doctors, says Dr. Bakwin, are prone to diagnose flat feet, large tonsils, malocclusion, heart murmur and poor posture as serious ailments when they are only normal variations that would be better let alone...
Scientific Inhumanity. But about the worst menace to children, in Dr. Bakwin's opinion, is the fad for incarcerating them in hospitals. To begin with, he thinks that, in spite of some advantages, a hospital is a poor place for a child to be born in: 1) there is little evidence that hospital delivery has reduced maternal or infant deaths; 2) it exposes the newborn infant to hospital-prevalent diseases (notably diarrhea) and the scientific inhumanity of doctors and nurses. Separating the baby from its mother at birth, instead of allowing it to be cuddled and breastfed...