Children's Physic
Medical Perceptions and Treatment of Sick Children in Early Modern England, c. 1580-1720
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12208294 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hannah Newton (0000-0001-8639-2663, University of Exeter, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 456-474 |
| Publication date | 2010-04-14 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social History of Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0951-631X • E-ISSN: 1477-4666 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/shm/hkq006 |
| PMID | 26306061 |
| OpenAlex | W2167666578 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 9 |
Historians of medicine, childhood and paediatrics have often assumed that early modern doctors neither treated children, nor adapted their medicines to suit the peculiar temperaments of the young. Through an examination of medical textbooks and doctors' casebooks, this article refutes these assumptions. It argues that medical authors and practising doctors regularly treated children, and were careful to tailor their remedies to complement the distinctive constitutions of children. Thus, this article proposes that a concept of 'children's physic' existed in early modern England. This term refers to the notion that children were physiologically distinct, requiring special medical care. Children's physic was rooted in the ancient traditions of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine: it was the child's humoral make-up that underpinned all medical ideas about children's bodies, minds, diseases and treatments. Children abounded in the humour blood, which made them humid and weak, and in need of medicines of a particularly gentle nature
Alternative medicine · Family medicine · Hippocratic Oath · Pathology · Perception · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Sick child · Temperament · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History of Medicine Studies · Medical History and Innovations · Medicine · Psychology · History · Pediatrics
| Citations per year | 0.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2012 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |