ABSTRACT
Introduction The second half of the 19th century saw growing scientific interest in the study of the child. Articles, and later books, appeared throughout Europe and the United States that focused on the infant’s first three years of life. By the 1880s, the Darwinian approach to natural sciences was extended to humans and the baby came to be seen as “a biological specimen”. With the founding of paediatric hospitals and the introduction of compulsory schooling for the under 12s, it became possible to investigate the developing child’s mind on a scale never seen before. Concomitant with the growing interest in normal development was an increased interest in the aetiology, prognosis and treatment of developmental disorders, with the hope that increased understanding of the latter could inform the former. At the end of the century, the American philosopher Henry Davies made the following claim: “the child-mind . . . is no longer a terra incognita where pedagogues grope in the dark. We now understand the force of such words as heredity and environment as applied to children” (Davies, 1900, p. 196).
