Faculty Bibliography

Klass comments that nowdays children who don't do well in one subject or another seem to be diagnosed with a learning problem. Nobody is just bad at math or not a good speller anymore

I know what my patients want--or at least what their parents want. I know what they want to take away with them, after I have performed my slightly mystical, ritualized functions--listened to the chest, looked in the ears, pressed on the belly. They want me to give them a spell, a charm, a nostrum to take home and make their children better. Isn't that what you expect from your friendly neighborhood witch, from your shaman, from your doctor? Sometimes parents tell me I'm on the wrong track. 'It will be an ear infection by tomorrow, it always is.' Or even, 'His other doctor always gives him penicillin when he has a cold.' Others just look disgruntled. And sometimes I try to get away with giving out samples of over-the-counter medicines, the various decongestants, cough medicines and antihistamines that the drug companies supply--here, I say, maybe this will help. And sometimes it does: The parent goes out of the door happy, holding a special magic mixture. I call it 'magic' not because it has no medical effect--it may or may not. The magic comes when it is handed over, recommended, by an expert. So much for pediatrics, where our great prescribing dilemma most of the time is about antibiotics. Patients want them, and we doctors try to hold the line and not give them out unnecessarily. Not for colds, not for runny noses, not for viruses, not for teething. There are sound medical reasons for our reticence; we know that antibiotics do not work against viruses, and that the overprescription of antibiotics is contributing to the emergence of bacteria that are resistant to many common drugs. So why do I sometimes feel guilty face to face with a mother who can't believe I'm holding out on her sick child? Why do I hope to see that bright red eardrum, that possible bacterial infection, that excuse to reach for the prescription pad? I want to help, and I also want to be seen as helpful. Often it's hard to find the right balance

Klass, a pediatrician and a mother, discusses how pediatricians may 'evaluate' what kind of parents their patients have from both sides of the issue. Klass says she has found that most of the time pediatricians aren't dealing with bad parents but less-than-shining moments in a long and difficult endeavor

The use of antibiotics to treat children with colds caused by a virus is discussed. Worried parents need convincing that antibiotics will not cure a cold

I was born in Trinidad in 1958; my father was doing a year of anthropological fieldwork, and my parents were living in a small East Indian village. One of the family stories about my birth is that my mother, hoping for a child, had brought two books along in her luggage, ''Childbirth Without Fear'' and Dr. Spock. That is, she had brought ''Baby and Child Care'' -- but she just called it ''Dr. Spock.'' The people in the village were much amused at the idea that anyone would need a book to take care of a baby. My mother, though, knew she had a friend and adviser at hand. I looked at them and felt completely overwhelmed, so I thought about my mother's story, and I reached for the smallest book on the pile: Dr. Spock. Opened it to the first page and read that magic first sentence, which has been calming parents since 1946: ''You know more than you think you do.''

Perri Klass reviews the book 'Damages: One Family's Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine' by Barry Werth

A pediatrician discusses how often symptoms of health problems in children are just a fact of life in young children's worlds

This is the korso, the local version of the Italian passeggiata, the ritualized stroll by evening past the palm trees and through the warm seaside night along the harbor, or into the old town, through the gates of Diocletian's Palace and on into the medieval town squares. Before Yugoslavia fell apart, the Dalmatian coast was the center of a thriving tourist industry, but during the recent war, some of the cities on the coast - most notably Dubrovnik, but also Zadar - suffered heavy shelling. We were making a slightly eccentric two-week trip, because Larry, my traveling companion, is a historian interested in the Venetian imperial adventure in Dalmatia. Between 1409 and 1797, when Napoleon abolished the Venetian Republic, Venice ruled this strip of land directly across the Adriatic