Drawing comparing the axis of the body with the pelvis in the human and the cat, by Joseph Leidy.
Ph.D. CandidateDepartment of History and Sociology of ScienceUniversity of Pennsylvania
The Salubrious Sea: Marine Hospitals, the Environment, and the Health of American Urban Children, 1870-1930
Abstract. Pediatric marine hospitals emerged as a trans-Atlantic phenomenon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These hospitals provided a space in which physicians, nurses, and reformers attempted to rebuild children into strong citizens through interactions with middle-class medical professionals and American nature. They also became environments in which indigent, urban parents negotiated the health-care of their children. This dissertation – the first to take pediatric marine hospitals as its central subject – explores why and how American reformers and physicians came to see the seashore as a salubrious solution to the emerging social problem of the sick, urban child. Pediatric seashore hospitals provide a window into the lived health experiences of indigent urban children and their families, the continuity of enviro-medical therapies and theories, and the contested terrain of authority, identity and citizenship at the turn of the twentieth century. Read Meghan's report on her PACHS-sponsored research here.
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