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BABY DOCTOR: 50 Years as a Pediatrictan by Dr. Isaac A. Abt

BABY DOCTOR: 50 Years as a Pediatrictan

By

Publisher: Whittlesey House

Unaffected plainclothes autobiography of one of the first pediatricians who went into that branch of medicine when it was barely recognized as a special field, when infant mortality was about 50%, and when people of most classes resented preventatives, cures, hospitals and relied on superstition and luck. The evils of the day, recurrent epidemics of diphtheria and typhoid, scurvy and rickets due to malnutrition, overswaddled infants, ignorant parents. His work in building a practice out of nothing, teaching (first in Chicago, then at Northwestern), district health examiner, helping to build a Children's Hospital. Cases -- and cases, of problem children as well as sick ones, and usually even more problem parents, and a commonsense approach to it all. Not important, but pleasant reading of yet another specialty in an ever popular field.