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24 cm. 8vo. 11, [1] pp. 10 plates. Original brown printed wrappers; extremities showing some wear. Rubber-stamps of Rush Medical College. Very good. Thomas Morgan Rotch was an influential American pediatrician, an active advocate of the care of premature infants in the early years of the 20th century. He invented a unique incubator in 1893, which had none of the disadvantages of older ones, while possessing many new and useful features (See: Archives of Pediatrics 10:661-665, 1893). / "One hundred and twenty-eight years after John Morgan became America's first professor of medicine at the newly founded Medical School of the College of Philadelphia in 1765, America's first full professor of pediatrics was appointed in 1893 to the Medical School of Harvard with full faculty status. This was an act of great significance for the growth of pediatrics in the United States. It constituted an important step to the introduction and establishment of a scientific approach in pediatrics; increased tempo in the care and welfare of children; and opened the door wider for pediatricians seeking faculty appointments". / "The acceptance of pediatrics had been a far greater task in America than in any European country, with the exception of England, due to "obstruction by reactionary powers such as antivivisectionists, antivaccinationists, and enemies of autopsies". / "Pediatrics was plodding along with painful, laborious steps until this belated recognition that illness in infants and children not only differed from that in adults and required special study, but there was urgent need to develop scientific knowledge of children's diseases. Children born in the 18th century had a good chance of dying of gastroenteritis; and if they recovered or escaped the affliction, they were still exposed to measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, diphtheria, dysentery, tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid, and yellow fever. The death rate was high, and only a very high birth rate could allow the country to grow. Those who survived these hazards lived to an old age with few brothers, sisters, and relatives. Therapy was the same for children as for adults-bleeding, purging, home remedies, prayer, fasting, diet, exotic and foul concoctions, sweating, and quackery". â " Harry Bloch, Pediatric perception: Thomas Morgan Rotch (1849-1914), America's first full Professor of Pediatrics: his contribution to the emergence of pediatrics as a specialty, pediatrics. Vol. 50, no. 1 July 1972, pp. 112-117.
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