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This book is an interpretative study of the life history of a female child, Kamala, who was reportedly brought up by wolves to the
age of nine and by humans from then until her death at seventeen (1929). Dr. Gesell's study of the child's life is based on the diary kept by the Rev. J. A. L. Singh of Mindapore, India (near Calcutta) in whose orphanage the child grew up after her rescue from the wolves. Another girl, Amala, six years younger, was also rescued at the same time and place but died shortly after. Dr. Gesell's attention was directed to the diary by Dr. R. M. Zingh of the University of Denver who stated1 that 'the publication of the valuable document, Dr. Singh's diary account of some 150 pages of the rescue and life in human society of the two wolf children of Mindapore, has been held up for about three years by me while working with many other interested scientists making every effort to check the account'. Until the appearance of the proposed publication of Dr. Singh's diary, the student interested in the actual background data of Dr. Gesell's book will naturally have no opportunity for first hand information.
We have to admire Dr. Gesell's courage and imagination in trying to reconstruct some of the earlier aspects of the child's life when she was still reportedly among the wolves. The reviewer, however, leaves it to physiologists to evaluate some of the changes which Dr. Gesell considered might have occurred: 'She perspired scarcely at all, she tended to pant and to extrude her tongue in the sun.' 'Her nostrils were somewhat enlarged and rounded from frequent dilation…' 'Her ears quivered slightly ion excitement…' 'In darkness a glow is said to have emanated from their eyes.' 'Her canine teeth were said to be longer and more pointed, her lips somewhat thicker, the lining of the mouth was blood red.' A very interesting finding was that Kamala developed a quadrupedal posture and gait which she gave up only gr