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Cynthia Comacchio, Janet Golden, and George Weisz, eds. Healing the World's Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Child Health in the Twentieth Century.

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Cynthia Comacchio, Janet Golden, and George Weisz, eds. Healing the World's Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Child Health in the Twentieth Century (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's Press 2008)

MONA GLEASON'S contribution to Healing the World's Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Child Health in the Twentieth Century opens with a simple, yet provocative observation: "Indeed, the entire history of Western approaches to child rearing is a history of shaping, training, controlling, feeding, disciplining, and cleaning small bodies in particular ways." (176) Almost all of these rituals were prescribed to keep young people alive and ideally allow them to become productive members of a family and society. Up until the 20th century, high rates of infant and child mortality rates showed that these tasks failed just as often as they succeeded. The eleven articles in this collection document how the advent of new vaccines, drugs, increased funding of child welfare programs, and. a growing international commitment to child rights generally improved the chances of surviving childhood across the 20th century. However these reforms were not achieved without ideological and scientific debate over the causes and prevention of ill health, nor were the gains made universal. Certain types of illnesses...

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