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This small volume relates the author's extensive observations on several hundred newborn infants. Unlike Gesell, Pratt and Feldman, who reckon the newborn period as being the first month of life, Dr. Stirnimann considers it to comprise about the first fourteen days and also believes that it is not of uniform length for all babies but is a function, or consequence, of certain conditions within the child. Dr. Stirnimann would substitute for "reflex" or "reaction" the Anglo-American term "response" as being more accurate to describe the behavior of the newborn infant. The book contains a clear exposition of the author's experimental procedure in investigating the senses of touch, pressure, warmth, cold, pain, taste, smell, hearing, seeing and balance, as well as feeling, memory and impulses. One interesting discovery in regard to the sense of touch is that infants do not respond so readily to inanimate material, such as a wooden stick