Nurturing Children: A History of Pediatrics

This history of the evolution of paediatrics from the beginning of recorded civilization examines chronologically the medical and societal antecedents of 20th-century child care. Although the term paediatrics is modern, the book explores the antecedents that facilitated the evolution of paediatric care as a separate discipline and a unique science. These antecedents include ancient manuscripts and the writings of acknowledged medical classicists, and the works of physicians in the East who recorded the medicine of the ancients, their own original theories, clinical observations and experience, and exported their wisdom to the West. The book’s point of view demonstrates that healers from the beginning of recorded time understood the unique physiology of the infant and the distinct nutritional and medical needs of the growing child. Despite this recognition, centuries of poorly-applied medical principles prevailed in the general population as adjuncts to societal conditions that included war, pestilence, ignorance of the pathophysiology of disease, and the exploitation of labour. In this milieu, suffering was universal. Paediatrics came into its own when richer, more stable societies had the time, energy and resources to provide for the most vulnerable of their subjects. Motives included economic self-interest as well as altruistic demand for social reform.