Children's Health Issues in Historical Perspective

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.

Cheryl Krasnick Warsh is a history professor at Malaspina University College and editor-in-chief of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. She has published Moments of Unreason: The Practice of Canadian Psychiatry and the Homewood Retreat, 1883-1923; Drink in Canada: Historical Essays; The Changing Nature of Drink: Substance, Imagery and Behaviour, and several studies on women's health and tobacco and alcohol advertising.

Veronica Strong-Boag is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a former president of the Canadian Historical Association. She teaches at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Her publications include The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English Canada, 1919-39 (1988) and Paddling Her Own Canoe: The Times and Texts of E. Pauline Johnson (2000), with Carole Gerson.