Lasting effects of early environmental influences

As commonly used the phrase ‘early influences’ denotes the conditioning of behavior by the experiences of very early life. Early experiences however do more than conditioning behavioural patterns; they also affect profoundly and lastingly many biological characteristics of the adult. I shall show that in animals events occurring during the very first days of life determine the initial growth rate the maximum adult size the efficiency in utilization of food and the resistance to infection malnutrition and other stressful stimuli. Early influences are of course at least [as] important in human life as they are in animal life. In fact the experiments to be reported here were designed to provide experimental models for the study of socio-medical problems first recognized in human populations. (excerpt)