| OCR Text |
Show It is interesting to find that so thor' aughly scientific a man as Professor William Preyer has adopted the fourfold four-fold classification of temperaments made nearly 2,000 years ago namely, the choleric, sanguine, melancholy and lymphatic. The existence of one or the other of these temperaments may be discerned, he says m his work on "The Infant Mind," very early in the great majority of children in the second sec-ond quarter of the first year, beyond a doubt. Nearly every one who has written about temperaments has got up a classification of his own. Galen had nine, Hay-cock gave six, Grahan, Brown seven, and others have got down bs low as two. Modern writers use the word nervous for choleric, and bilious for melancholic temperament. With these verbal modifications, the old classification clas-sification seems to answer all practical purposes, and individuals can build up combinations as needed. Hutchinson defines temperament as the sum of the physical peculiarities of a man exclusive of his tendency to disease. This is not very satisfac. j tory, though perhaps temperament is a thing a little too vague to be satisfactorily satisfacto-rily defined. In modern terms it may be said to bo the peculiar way in which the individual reacts to the stimuli of his environment. There is no doubt that one class of persons reacts quickly and easily, expending energy profusely and often needlessly in their life work; others react hopefully and work buoyantly, buoy-antly, yet with less waste. We can thus distinguish the nervons, the sanguine, san-guine, the melancholic, etc. A capacity capac-ity to recognize and appreciate the importance im-portance of temperament used to be considered con-sidered part of a sound medical training. train-ing. It has been too much neglected in our pursuit of minutiae with microscopes micro-scopes and test tubes. Our teachers of practical medicine might well revive its study. Medical Record. |
