Down to a cellular level, science has recognized that cells do better if they have a relationship with a like cell. Is this something we can compare to love? In addition to the experiments conducted on cells, there have also been experiments similar in nature that have been conducted on animals. These experiments revealed that removing animals from relationship literally causes a profound effect on their body’s ability to maintain health. In the absence of a love relationship there is a negative effect on the cardio vascular system, the circulatory system, the repertory system, central nervous system, emotions, immune system, the digestive system and hormonal system among a host of additional areas that are crucial to life.
Reviewing such studies led me to define a syndrome in children. There was a time when children became ill in which they were quarantined in hospital wards and were purposefully kept away from their families because it was believed the diseases that affected the children were transmissible to the rest of their family. It was found that these children developed a syndrome that was defined as deprivation dwarfism which is an arresting of not only physical growth and development, but also an arresting of social, mental and emotional growth and development. These children literally had a stunting of growth in every aspect of their physiology all the way from their brain to the tips of their toes. This was conclusive evidence that the absence of relationship which led to the absence of love was of profound importance in the life of a child.
During the same time period, there was a member of the first human reference article that spoke of society back in the 1400s; a time in which a ruler of a Mediterranean island had decreed that he thought the origin of human language was something that was not taught, but rather something humans were born with. In order to prove his theory, this ruler used babies who were born in his kingdom and separated the babies from their parents so they were devoid of hearing any human language. According to his theory, the babies, due to their genetics, would spontaneously begin to develop a language. In other words, the human language was supposedly something that was inherent, but not something that was learned. The experiment never came to completion because every single baby that was separated from his family in order to be used for the experiment died within a short period of time.
In my research, I read a parallel article that was written during the year 1970 about a group of babies that were given up for adoption and were studied at Boston Hospital; a prestigious academic center. These babies stayed at the hospital nursery for up to three months. In an effort to reduce infectious disease within the hospital nursery where the newborns were kept, several biological parameters where taken as an indicator of each baby’s health. Health parameters where methodically maintained for each newborn, yet the majority of these babies, if they stayed in the nursery long enough, wound up dying.
The conclusion as to why the babies were dying was the fact that they were tremendously devoid of human contact. They did not have a caregiver that was giving them the quality of love in the form of physical affection as well as emotional, spiritual and mental affection that is commonly given to a newborn.
The significance of what I was reading is that there was conclusive proof as recent as the 1970s in which the absence of love resulting in death had been conclusively proven.