Naissance de la pédiatrie au 19e siècle

Pediatrics began under the most unfavorable conditions that are difficult to imagine nowadays. Children at the start of the 19th century were considered as negligible. The death rate was tremendous, increased by the work of children in factories as soon as 6 years of age in textile industries. In upper classes, infants were fed by a wet nurse, far from their parents and death rate was high as well. The emergence of pediatrics was the result of work carried out in adult medicine in the first half of the 19th century: clinical anatomic method, knowledge of contagious diseases even before the discovery of bacteria, birth of bacteriology. During the whole century, infectious diseases contributed in a large part to children mortality, as that of adults, by cholera, typhus, variola, diphtheria, measles and tuberculosis. Progresses noted during the 2nd part of the century resulted from beginning of hygiene, antisepsis, nutrition improvement, taking consideration of children as human being asking for protection. In contrast, therapeutics as serotherapy, vaccinations at the break of the 20th century played a secondary role.