This richly illustrated book fills a gap in the literature. It is not another history of famous researchers, but a history of endangered newborns and their fate in medicine and society from ...
MoreThis richly illustrated book fills a gap in the literature. It is not another history of famous researchers, but a history of endangered newborns and their fate in medicine and society from the earliest days of human thought, investigating what remained in medieval and persists in modern life. Each chapter rests on exhaustive research in hospital archives, libraries, churches, or excavation fields. With a global perspective, the book identifies technical, medical, social, and political conditions that improved—or compromised—the infant’s quality of life. The newborn’s history has multiple cultural implications. It depended on maternal care, breastfeeding, and cleanliness. Legislation had to protect babies from infanticide and to define the viability of preterm or malformed infants. By tracing the history of legal, philosophical, and social ideas about the newborn, the book develops three overarching themes across societies and times: (1) the newborn was not regarded as a complete human being, but as unfinished and endowed with only partial personhood; (2) rites of passage evolved everywhere, aiming to ‘complete’ the newborn and accept it in family and society; and (3) abandonment and infanticide suggest that many newborns were greeted with ambivalence, and that their frequent death was largely accepted by parents and societies. The book embraces all aspects of the transition from fetal to postnatal life. It will be of major interest to scholars, professionals, and students specializing in obstetrics, midwifery, paediatrics, and neonatology. Medical terminology has been used cautiously and a glossary makes the text accessible outside the health professions.
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