Introduction

Abstract

In the early twentieth century controversies erupted when the children of parents who rejected scientific medicine as a tenet of their faith died of medically treatable conditions. Criminal trials brought parents’ decisions in caring for their little ones under the glare of public scrutiny, and the fraught discourses that surrounded them shifted concerns about children’s physical welfare beyond the walls of the private household. Throughout the remainder of the century medical neglect cases rendered the bodies of children into sites of contention as broader medical and legal developments converged, and indeed collided, to produce these periodic controversies. This book examines religious-based medical neglect as a historical phenomenon that reflects changing social constructions of childhood in the United States.