STILL A BABY AT 22.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2354, 21 November 1908, Page 4 (Supplement)

STILL A BABY AT 22.

DEVONSHIRE GIRL WHO HAS NEVER GROWN UP.

LIKE A CHILD OF FIVE

In an isolated cottage by a quiet by-road in the small ham-let of Cove, Devon, lives a girl who, though twenty-two years old, has never grown up. Her name is Mildred Hart, and she is the daughter of a carpenter. Since she was five years of age she has not developed either physically or mentally. Her teeth are those - she cut as an infant, and she has retained all her baby ways. She was seated in a baby’s chair nursing a doll when a correspondent entered the cottage. Every now and again she ywould kiss the doll and then hold it up to her young sister, a tall girl of twenty, with the command m broad Devon, “Kissun.” LIKE A CHILD OF FIVE. Her clothes, even to her little socks and shoes, are such as one is accustomed to see on a child of five. She takes some pride in her garments. She is not so, much <sf a conversationalist as some children of five. When her sister asked her who made her clothes, she replied, “Mudder,” and answered several other queries in monosyllables. Her mother still nurses her daughter just as she did seventeen years ago. The girl dislikes going to bed, and insists on remaining downstairs fill her parents retire for the night, when sho is put in a little cot in their .room.

The parents cannot 'assign a reason for the arrested development of their child, hut it appears that two sisters of one of the child’s grandmothers failed to develop in the same way. One died 1 at tho age of nine, and the other at eighteen. The girl enjoys the best health, and is much pm re contented than the ordinary child of five. She will sit for hours at a stretch nursing her doll. Everyone in the hamlet has a kindly word for her when she is driven out in her ma ilea it. (She snTiles back their greetings, and is usually very good tempered. There are five members of tlio family, one of the sons being a stalwart member of the Metropolitan Police force.

AN UNCOMMON AILMENT

Such cases, writes a medical correspondent, are not common in this country, but aro well known medically, being duo to what is called ‘cretinism,” a condition in which the thyroid gland (in the lower part of tho neck) is affected. Sufferers usually have a heavy, dull, sleepy expression and manner, the features being coarse and thick. The mental deficiency ds usually most marked. Tho condition is supposed, to be due to the ahsenco_ of an “internal secretion” of the thyroid gland (which has no duct like most glands), and this secretion is supposed to play an important part dn the general metabolism of _ the body, though how, or what it is, we do not yet know. Very satisfactory results have ensued from the administration of an “extract of thyroid gland” from animals. Tho stature is increased rapidly, the intelligence is improved, the •bodily functions become- more /normal, and) general improvement is maintained as long as the “thyroid extract” is taken. Degeneration, however, results if treatment is abandoned.