From sentimental stories about polio to the latest cherub in hospital commercials, sick children tug at the public's heartstrings. However sick children have not always had adequate medical care or protection. The essays in Children's Issues in Historical Perspective investigate the identification, prevention, and treatment of childhood diseases from the 1800s onwards, in areas ranging from French-colonial Vietnam to nineteenth-century northern British Columbia, from New Zealand fresh air camps to American health fairs.

Themes include: the role of government and/or the private sector in initiating and underwriting child public health programs; the growth of the profession of pediatrics and its views on "proper" mothering techniques; the role of nationalism, as well as ethnic and racial dimensions in child-saving movements; normative behaviour, social control, and the treatment of "deviant" children and adolescents; poverty, wealth, and child health measures; and the development of the modern children's hospital.

This liberally illustrated collection reflects the growing academic interest in all aspects of childhood, especially child health, and originates from health care professionals and scholars across the disciplines. An introduction by the editors places the historical themes in context and offers an overview of the contemporary study of children's health.

Table of Contents for | Children's Health Issues in Historical Perspective

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Spotlight on Children | Cheryl Krasnick Warsh and Veronica Strong-Boag

Politics

Vegetables on Parade: American Medicine and the Child Health Movement in the Jazz Age | Naomi Rogers

No More Surprising than a Broken Pitcher? Maternal and Child Health in the Early Years of the Pan American Sanitary Bureau | Anne-Emmanuelle Birn

Entre la "Revanche" et la "Veillée" des berceaux: Les médecins québécois francophones, la mortalité infantile et la question nationale, 1910-1940 | Denyse Baillargeon

Nutrition

Infant Ideologies: Doctors, Mothers, and the Feeding of Children in Australia, 1880-1910 | Lisa Featherstone

Perpetually Malnourished? Diet, Health, and America's Young in the Twentieth Century | Judith Sealander

The Early Development of Nutrition Policy in Canada | Aleck Ostry

Racial and Ethnic Dimensions

Caring for the Foreign-Born: The Health of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1890-1925 | Howard Markel

La médicalisation de la mère et de son enfant: L'exemple du Vietnam sous domination française, 1860-1939 | Laurence Monnais

Complicating Childhood: Gender, Ethnicity, and "Disadvantage" within the New Zealand Children's Health Camps Movement | Margaret Tennant

Race, Class, and Health: School Medical Inspection and "Healthy" Children in British Columbia, 1890-1930 | Mona Gleason

Ordering the Bath: Children, Health and Hygiene in Northern Canadian Communities, 1900-1970 | Myra Rutherdale

Experts

Physician Denial and Child Sexual Abuse in America, 1870-2000 | Hughes Evans

"Living Symptoms": Adolescent Health Care in English Canada, 1920-1970 | Cynthia Comacchio

The Iconography of Child Public Health: Between Medicine and Reform | Janet Golden

Institutions

La contribution de l'Hôpital Saint-Paul et de l'Alexandra Hospital à la lutte contre les maladies contagieuses infantiles à Montréal, 1905-1934 | Marie-Josée Fleury and Guy Grenier

The Architecture of Children's Hospitals in Toronto and Montreal, 1875-2010 | Annmarie Adams and David Theodore

Frontier Health Services for Children: Alberta's Provincial Travelling Clinic, 1924-1942 | Sharon L. Richardson

Selected Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index

Contributors' Bios

CHERYL KRASNICK WARSH teaches history at Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, British Columbia, and is editor-in-chief of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin canadien d'histoire de la médecine. She is the author of Moments of Unreason: The Practice of Canadian Psychiatry and the Homewood Retreat, 1883-1923 and the forthcoming Women's Health in North America, 1800-2000.

VERONICA STRONG-BOAG is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a former president of the Canadian Historical Association and teaches in Women's Studies and Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Finding Families, Finding Ourselves: English Canada Confronts Adoption from the 19th Century to the 1990s (forthcoming) and, with Carole Gerson, Paddling Her Own Canoe: The Times and Texts of E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake).

ANNMARIE ADAMS is an associate professor in the School of Architecture at McGill University. She is the author of Architecture in the Family Way: Women, Houses, and Doctors, 1870-1900 and co-author of Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession.

DENYSE BAILLARGEON est professeure au département d'histoire de l'Université de Montréal. Elle est l'auteure de Un Québec en mal d'enfants: La médicalisation de la maternité, 1910-1970.

ANNE-EMANUELLE BIRN is Canada Research Chair in International Health at the University of Toronto. Her forthcoming book is Marriage of Convenience: Rockefeller International Health and Revolutionary Mexico.

CYNTHIA COMACCHIO teaches history at Wilfrid Laurier University; her forthcoming book is The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence in English Canada, 1920-1950.

HUGHES EVANS, MD, PhD, is a practising general pediatrician and a medical historian. Her historical interest in child sexual abuse is complemented by clinical practice in that area.

LISA FEATHERSTONE is a member of the Department of Modern History at Macquarie University, Sydney, where she teaches gender history and Australian history. Her research interests include reproduction, pediatrics, and sexuality.

MARIE-JOSéE FLEURY est professeur adjoint au Département de psychiatrie de l'Université McGill et chercheur au Centre de recherche de l'Hôpital Douglas à Montréal. Elle etait publié au Ruptures, Revue transdisciplinaire en santé, Health Services management Research, et The International Journal of Health Planning and Management.

MONA GLEASON is a faculty member in Educational Studies, University of British Columbia, the author of Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling, and the Family in Postwar Canada, and co-editor of Children, Teachers, and School in the History of British Columbia, 2nd Edition and Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women's History, 4th Edition.

JANET GOLDEN teaches history at Rutgers University, Camden, and is the author of Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She is currently working on a history of children's experiences of illness in the United States from 1865 to 1945.

GUY GRENIER détient un doctorat en histoire de la médecine à l'Université de Montréal. Il est présentement agent de recherche au l'Hôpital Douglas à Montréal. Il etait publié Les monstres, les fous et les autres, et Cent ans de médecine francophone, Histoire de l'Association des médecins de langue française du Canada.

HOWARD MARKEL, MD, PhD is the George E. Wantz Professor of the History of Medicine and professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the University of Michigan, where he directs the Center for the History of Medicine. He is the author of When Germs Travel and Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892, and co-editor of Formative Years: Children's Health in the United States, 1880-2000.

LAURENCE MONNAIS is an assistant professor, Department of History and Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Montreal. Her first book was entitled, Médecine et colonisation. L'aventure indochinoise, 1869-1939.

ALECK OSTRY is an associate professor in the Department of Healthcare and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Colum- bia, and is the recipient of a Canadian Institute for Health Research New Investigator award.

SHARON L. RICHARDSON, past president of the Alberta Association of Registered Nurses, is an associate professor of Nursing, University of Alberta.

NAOMI ROGERS is an associate professor in the History of Medicine and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. She is the author of Dirt and Disease: Polio before FDR and An Alternative Path: The Making and Remaking of Hahnemann Medical School and Hospital in Philadelphia.

MYRA RUTHERDALE is the author of Women and the White Man's God: Gender and Race in the Canadian Mission Field and an assistant professor of history at York University in Toronto.

JUDITH SEALANDER is a professor of history at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. She is the author of five books, most recently The Failed Century of the Child: Governing America's Young in the Twentieth Century.

MARGARET TENNANT is a professor of history at Massey University, New Zealand. She has primarily published in the areas of women's and welfare history, and recently co-edited Past Judgement: Social Policy in New Zealand History.

DAVID THEODORE is a research associate on the project Medicine by Design at the School of Architecture, McGill University. He is a regular contributor to Azure, Architecture, and Canadian Architect.