Four Child Health Histories for Philadelphia, 1846–52

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.