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This book first appeared in Great Britain at the same time as the author's second film, Going to Hospital with Mother, and was intended as a companion to it. The American volume is more attractively and permanently bound and seems to be intended to stand on its own feet.
Mr Robertson's two well-known films about the hospitalization of young children gave hospitals a much needed push towards humanizing their care of the very young. Similarly the case-histories he presents in this book describe the distress of little children taken away from their mothers when they do not feel very ill. Examples given include children going into hospital for elective operations such as herniorrhaphy and for treatment of primary tuberculosis. These films and written reports are recorded case-studies of individual children's reactions to hospitalization under certain conditions. As such, the work provides interesting and valid evidence about some childhood behaviour and feeling in specified circumstances.
Mr Robertson also quotes the work of others and draws various conclusions on the basis of which he gives useful advice to hospitals and parents as to how to minimize anxiety in young children who have to go into hospital.
It seems to the reviewer, however, that the material is presented in such a way that the psychological dangers of separating mother and child are liable to be over-estimated. A surgeon was recently said to have told a group of medical students: 'Never admit a child under five to hospital without its mother, or it will become psychotic'. This terrifying prognosis, or lesser degrees of such fear, might well lead to loss of life if physical treatment is withheld, even for a short time, until the mother can enter hospital with her ill child. Further investigation into the psychological effects of hospitalization for acute illness, with and without mother being present, is clearly needed. There is also the very important question of the psychological meaning of illn