History of American Pediatrics

History is said to be written by the victors. In this history of pediatric care in America, Dr Cone has written a celebration of the victory over childhood diseases in the New World. What a marvelous historian he is! He traces childhood illness in America beginning at the colonial period and gives a lively account of the diseases that crossed the Atlantic with the colonists, the pitiful medical tools of the trade during the early periods, and the great men and women who brought new understanding to ageold diseases. Although a colonial child had a better chance of surviving infancy than his English counterpart, fewer than two of three infants lived to see their tenth birthdays. Over the years, as problems of infection and malnutrition succumbed to research, pediatricians began to take interest in political and legislative solutions to childhood ills. This, too, is faithfully recorded by Dr Cone. In