The advent of an infant affected with deformity of lip or palate, or both, brings directly to the parents and physician in charge, the urgent necessity of deciding whether immediate or at least early radical operation for the correction of the deformity shall be performed, or methods of treatment adopted that will admit of postponement of palate closure until a later period.
With authorities openly divided on this question as they are, the decision must necessarily be a difficult one to determine, more especially since such cases are comparatively infrequent in the general practice of medicine and surgery.
My practice being limited to this field and necessarily covering a somewhat extensive territory, the opportunity to observe both the effects of treatment according to my own system on infants under widely different, often extremely difficult conditions, and the result of operations by others in their influence on the appearance and development