Donald Paterson, for whom this lecture is named, was one of those giants of paediatric medicine who gave the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street its great reputation. In the 1920s Donald Paterson played a vital part in the foundation of the British Paediatric Association. By the 1950s he had returned to Canada, but was by no means retired. I well remember his warm welcome to the participants in the Ross Laboratories Symposium here in Vancouver in 1958. That meeting heralded the application of methods, developed in the experimental laboratory, to the analysis of disease in premature infancy. It was the beginning of the end of a long era in which the doctrine of noninterference and of noninvestigation had been preeminent. For many it was not an easy transition. But for Paterson the new technology, the catheters, the body plethysmographs and new-style incubators, and the whole postwar development of experimental medicine provided a fertile ground for analysis, critical appraisal, speculation, and above all, encouragement. This was the most important gift that anyone in his position could have made, and he was generous.It is interesting to look back and consider why this doctrine of noninterference with newly born sick children was so widely held. Unnecessary handling was known to be unwise, from practical experience. But of equal importance was the general view that the infant was relatively incompetent, feeble, incapable of communication, and unable to regulate its bodily functions adequately. It lost heat rapidly, its temperature regulation was poor, its urine dilute, its breathing periodic, its blood pressure low, and its immunity passive.
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