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Four Child Health Histories for Philadelphia, 1846–52
- The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 12, Number 2, Spring 2019
- pp. 167-178
- 10.1353/hcy.2019.0018
- Article
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Abstract:
This is an examination of a particular form of physician-cum-family child health documentary history. The document is used for two purposes. First, to confirm the macro-level assessments on the objective reasons for the decline in middle-class infant mortality in Philadelphia (circa 1820–60) and to reveal the interaction of those factors/initiatives within one concrete family. Second, to explore the subjective conceptual understanding of infant health and development for a nonspecialist physician and a middle-class family in the mid-nineteenth century. The study has relevance for the very early beginning of what became the infant-health movement in America’s eastern urban centers (Meckel, Save the Babies). As a unique document, it offers guidance on how the topic of “infant health” could be conceived, enhanced, and recorded.