This history of the evolution of pediatrics from the beginning of recorded civilization examines chronologically the medical and societal antecedents of current child care. Although the term pediatrics is modern, the book explores the antecedents that facilitated the evolution of pediatric 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,...

"A History of Children" investigates the treatment of children throughout the millennia, examining and comparing, in the timeline from prehistory to the present, cultural codes, and societal laws. A recurrent theme in the book is the unchanging, immutable nature of childhood despite epochal and societal differences in birth rituals, education, puberty rituals, inheritance laws, child labor legislation, cultural customs, and historical events that have affected the lives of children over the last 5000 years. Despite the cruelties of infanticide, abandonment, and slavery that continue to...