ABSTRACT
The history of medicine in relation to the newborn and the infant lacks an intellectual domain of its own. It exists primarily as the history of an established medical specialty, pediatrics. Other aspects of that study reside in the histories of the family, economics, and women, in historical demography, and in the history of public health. To succeed as an area of scholarly research, therefore, the history of medical care of infants must develop issues and hypotheses of its own. At the same time, the issues generated must be interesting enough to appeal to researchers in other historical areas. One of the purposes of this essay will be to suggest some of the themes a medical history of neonates, infants, and children could pursue.
