Archives and Special Collections Exhibit

Bringing Up Baby: 200 Years of Child-Rearing Books

An Exhibit in the Lobby Level of the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library
Columbia University Medical Center
June-August 2009

The exhibit is open to all those with valid Columbia University or New York-Presbyterian Hospital identification during regular Library hours: Mon. – Thurs., 8am-8pm; Fri., 8am-6pm; Sat., 10am-6pm; Sun., 12pm-8pm.

Protecting children from disease and ill health has always been among the most important concerns of parents. Until the early 20th century the child mortality rate was shockingly high even in advanced industrial countries and the survival of a child to adulthood was by no means a given.

For advice on raising healthy children, American parents have turned to relatives, neighbors, physicians, and – increasingly over the years – to advice books. Written by both laymen and laywomen as well as by physicians, these child-rearing books laid out what parents needed to know about the treating the illnesses of infants and children. Many aimed at the more ambitious goal of bringing up children who were not only healthy but happy.

Archives & Special Collections at the Health Sciences Library now has on display a selection of American child-rearing books from the last 200 years. The oldest, The Maternal Physician (1818), by Mary Palmer Tyler, has the distinction of being one of the earliest medical books written by a women in the U.S.

Also included are two huge bestsellers written by physicians with a connection to Columbia University. The Care and Feeding of Children, first published in 1895, was written by L. Emmett Holt, medical director of Babies Hospital for many years and professor of pediatrics at the College of Physicians & Surgeons. It went through 12 editions and 75 printings, as well as being translated into Chinese, Russian, and Spanish, before Holt’s death in 1924.

The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, written by 1929 P&S graduate Benjamin Spock, was an even bigger success. First published in 1946, by the late 1990s it had sold more than 50 million copies and had been translated into 42 languages. It is probably the most famous medical advice book ever published. Though thousands of copies of “Dr. Spock’s book” exist, Archives & Special Collections has on display a copy of the rarer hardcover first edition of 1946 with an intact dust jacket.

The introduction of antibiotics after 1945 and the widespread practice of immunization have drastically reduced child mortality in the industrialized countries. But advice books for parents still flourish and most likely will continue to thrive as long as child-rearing remains an art, not a science.

“Bringing Up Baby: 200 Years of Child-Rearing Books” was curated by Stephen E. Novak, Head, Archives & Special Collections. For more information contact hslarchives@columbia.edu