In the Balance
Weighing Babies and the Birth of the Infant Welfare Clinic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15026786 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lawrence T Weaver (Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 84 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 30-57 |
| Publication date | 2010-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bulletin of the history of medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-5140 • E-ISSN: 1086-3176 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/bhm.0.0315 |
| PMID | 20632732 |
| OpenAlex | W2135374992 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 13 |
The nineteenth century saw the incorporation of technology, such as the stethoscope, microscope, and thermometer, into clinical medicine. An instrument that has received less attention in the history of the role of technology in medicine is the weighing balance, or scale. Although not new to nineteenth-century medicine, it played an important part in the rise of the numerical method and its application to the development and shaping of pediatrics. This article explores the origin and development of the weighing of babies. During its clinical and scientific adoption, this simple procedure was refined and applied in a number of increasingly sophisticated and far-reaching ways: as a measure of the dimensions of the fetus and newborn, as an index of the viability of the newborn, as a means of estimating milk intake, as a way of distinguishing normality from abnormality, as a summary measure of infant health, and as an instrument of mass surveillance. In so doing it changed the way in which medical care was delivered to infants
Balance (ability) · Normality · Physical therapy · Political science · Psychiatry · Welfare · Child and Adolescent Health · History of Medicine Studies · Law · Medicine · Medicine, History, and Philosophy · Pediatrics
Modern mothers, modern babies
"Why do we measure mankind?" Marketing anthropometry in late-Victorian Britain
Afterburn
Correcting the record on Watson, Rayner, and Little Albert
Governing breastfeeding and the making of the ‘good mother’
Standard growth and diarrhea‐associated growth faltering in captive infant rhesus macaques ( Macaca mulatta )
Long panel studies of small-scale rural societies in the Global South
Infant and child mortality in the past
Infant and child mortality in the past
Mothers’ Milk and Mothers’ Time
On the Virtues of Historical Entomophagy
Science and the practice of medicine in the nineteenth century
Human Milk in the Modern World
Essai Philosophique Sur Les Probabilités
The Glasgow Corporation Milk Depot 1904-1910 and its Role in Infant Welfare
Every Child a Lion
Mothers and Infants, Nurses and Nursing
Medicalization and Moralization
Protecting Infants
The Spirit of System
The End of the Wet-Nursing Business in France, 1874-1914
Medicine and the Reign of Technology
The Birth of the Clinic
The invention of infant mortality
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,69 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2026 (17) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |