Children's Physic: Medical Perceptions and Treatment of Sick Children in Early Modern England, c. 1580-1720
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: 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.
Source: Social History of Medicine
DOI: 10.1093/shm/hkq006
Author: H. Newton
Institution: University of Exeter
Language: English
Topic: History of Medicine Studies
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Wellcome Trust
OpenAlex ID: W2167666578