"A Sick Child Deserves Its Rights": Law, Religion, And Children's Medical Care In The United States, 1870–1910

At the turn of the twentieth century, troubling medical neglect cases raised new questions about children's rights to physical care and adults' responsibilities in providing it to them. When demonstrably effective therapies such as diphtheria antitoxin became available, were parents obligated to seek them for their gravely ill children? The emergence of medical neglect as both a social trope and a legal infraction reflected growing recognition of children's unique physiology and their particularized needs for physical care. At the same time, a broad child welfare movement rendered children's well-being into a matter of social, and not merely private, concern. Within this reenvisioning of children's physical needs, American courts interpreted parental duties in increasingly medicalized terms. An emerging legal standard required parents to provide their children with medical care in accordance with the "science of the age." But the mixed outcomes of medical neglect cases demonstrated that many Americans remained wary about using the power of the state to intrude on traditional parental prerogatives. Examining early twentieth-century medical neglect cases and the historical context in which they emerged reveals the complex interplay of medicine and law in shaping the history of childhood.