Les soins prodigués aux enfants : influence des innovations médicales et des institutions médicalisées (1750-1914). Médecine et déclin de la mortalité infantile

Abstract

How far can medical progress and new forms of medical intervention be held responsible for the noticeable decline of infant mortality which begins as early as 1750 in some countries like France and becomes more marked after 1890 ? In the first period ( end of the XVIIIth - beginning of the XIXth century), few lives are saved but in many countries (such as France, England and Germany), doctors and statemen become conscious of the need for emergency measures to save more babies ; a medical way of raising children begins to be used by the families from the elites ; but therapeutics are still inefficient for infant illnesses. During the major part of the XIXth century, progresses are slow (as for example in the treatment of diphteria), but hygienism tries to fill the gap ; widespread vaccination against smallpox enables medical men to enter into most families. Only at the end of the century, with the massive and often authoritarian diffusion of the pastorian techniques of hygiene and of the first vaccines and serums, can scientific medecine really influence the decline of infant mortality. Comparisons between France, England, Germany and United-States show that everywhere doctors have urged to create dispensaries where mothers could be taught the precepts of the new medicine. Nevertheless, traditional behaviours have survived long in the XXth century. But the decisive decline of infant mortality is already obvious before 1914.

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