Using the History of Pediatrics

Abstract

The world of medical history is often a chaotic one, concentrated around the twin attractors of the professional historian and the physician historian. This 'oppositional clustering* as Charles Rosenberg calls it, has developed over the past forty years from a new interest in the social and cultural past of medicine, health and healing, increasing interest in gender relations in medicine, and changes in the relative status of physicians and historians, together with the widespread critique of social institutions evident since the 1960s.1 This polarisation is particularly evident in the history of medicine for children, where recent social historical and sociological interest in the child welfare movement, the meaning of childhood and gender relations, have produced a new species of histories that challenge the more traditional stories of the development of pediatric medicine. This confusing multiplicity of histories is often difficult to negotiate, even for professional historians. In particular, the newer social historical approaches are frequently hard for physicians to understand or relate to. The aim of this short paper is to give a brief overview of the current historiography of the field, with particular reference to America, and to suggest ways in which doctors might find social historical approaches useful. The new histories of child health are the products of changes in historical scholarship over the last twenty years. One of their messages