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Richard A. Meckel : Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929

The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 1990

ISBN 9780801838798

8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. T6 - A first edition (no additional printing) hardcover book in very good condition in good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has some wrinkling, chipping, and crease on the edges and corners, fading on the spine, patch wrinkled on the back bottom, tanning and light shelf wear. Book has some bumped corners, some wrinkling on the spine edges, light discoloration and shelf wear. 9.5"x6.5", 302 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Today fewer than one in a hundred American babies die in infancy. But a century ago, as many as one in six did. Save the Babies is the story of the public health campaign mounted to reduce that appalling waste of life. Historian Richard Meckel analyzes the efforts of American infant welfare reformers, from their "discovery" of infant mortality as a social problem in the 1850s to their limited success in securing federal funding for infancy and maternity programs in the 1920s. In a substantive epilogue, he also traces the evolution of American infant welfare policy from the 1930s to the present. Meckel depicts a reform movement that had a single, overriding goal but was made up of professional groups with often competing ideas and agendas. He shows how interaction between these groups, as well as changing social and medical theories, propelled the movement through three overlapping phases. In the first phase, infant welfare activists sought to reduce infant mortality through general environmental reform. In the second, they attempted to upgrade the quality of commercial milk. And in the third, they turned their attention to improving mothers' abilities to carry, bear, and rear healthy infants. Save the Babies presents a clear and detailed account of an important modern reform movement. By placing that movement within an international context, Meckel also illustrates how and why the United States, virtually alone among the industrialized nations, stopped short of establishing a comprehensive, government-sponsored infant welfare program. Drawing upon medical, and women's history, Save the Babies offers an incisive analysis of the formation sociomedical policy.. Book Condition: Very Good. Binding: Hardcover. Jacket: Good

First Edition

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