History of Pediatrics

Pediatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. The upper age limit of such patients ranges from age 12 to 21. A medical practitioner who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician. The word pediatrics and its cognates mean healer of children; they derive from two Greek words: παῖς (pais = child) and ἰατρός (iatros = doctor or healer).

In Commonwealth countries, the respective spellings paediatrics and paediatrician are usually preferred. There may be a slight semantic difference: in the USA, a pediatrician (US spelling) is often a primary care physician who specializes in children, whereas in the Commonwealth a paediatrician (British spelling) generally is a medical specialist not in primary general practice. For further detail, see discussion on the broad and narrow meanings of physician.

History of Pediatrics

In Europe in the Enfants-Trouvés (1674-1838) in Paris (French = Hospice for Found-Children, i.e., Foundlings). There was a gradual move to found separate institutions specifically for ill children, partly to avoid exposing them to adults in adult hospitals.

In the Western world, the first generally accepted paediatric hospital is the Hôpital des Enfants Malades (French = Hospital for Sick Children), opened in Paris in June 1802, on the site of a previous orphanage. From its beginning, this famous hospital accepted patients up to the age of fifteen years, and it continues to this day as the paediatric division of the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital, created in 1920 by merger with the physically contiguous Necker Hospital, founded in 1778 for adults.

This example was only gradually followed in other European countries. The Charité (a hospital founded in 1710) in Berlin established a separate Paediatric Pavillion in 1830, followed by similar institutions at Saint Petersburg in 1834, and at Vienna and Breslau (now Wroclaw), both in 1837. The English-speaking world waited until 1852 for its first paediatric hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, some fifty years after the founding of its namesake in Paris. In the USA, the first similar institutions were the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which opened in in 1855, and then Boston Children’s Hospital (1869).

Source: Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pediatrics

Category: Pediatric Basics.

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