Growing Pains

Despite the immense interest sparked by recent child abuse and orphan vaccination trials, the history of childhood illness in Ireland has remained largely hidden. Spanning two centuries, Growing Pains is the first history of Ireland's unique social, cultural and political responses to safeguarding childhood health and treating physically, psychologically and socially vulnerable children. It also investigates medical management in the home, hospitals, reformatories, industrial schools and workhouses - places where treatments ranged from the unorthodox to the experimental. Growing Pains provides an account of infectious and non-infectious diseases such as rickets, smallpox, tuberculosis, Spanish flu, epilepsy and opthalmia, and explores community and institutional responses to these illnesses across the centuries, as well as describing the medical pioneers who fought for better treatment and condition for Ireland's children