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Concept
Pediatrics
Summary
Pediatrics (also spelled paediatrics or pædiatrics) is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until the age of 18. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends people seek pediatric care through the age of 21, but some pediatric subspecialists continue to care for adults up to 25. Worldwide age limits of pediatrics have been trending upward year after year. A medical doctor who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician, or paediatrician. The word pediatrics and its cognates mean "healer of children", derived from the two Greek words: παῖς (pais "child") and ἰατρός (iatros "doctor, healer"). Pediatricians work in clinics, research centers, universities, general hospitals and children's hospitals, including those who practice pediatric subspecialties (e.g. neonatology requires resources available in a NICU).
The earliest mentions of child-specific medical problems appear in the Hippocratic Corpus, published in the fifth century B.C., and the famous Sacred Disease. These publications discussed topics such as childhood epilepsy and premature births. From the first to fourth centuries A.D., Greek philosophers and physicians Celsus, Soranus of Ephesus, Aretaeus, Galen, and Oribasius, also discussed specific illnesses affecting children in their works, such as rashes, epilepsy, and meningitis. Already Hippocrates, Aristotle, Celsus, Soranus, and Galen understood the differences in growing and maturing organisms that necessitated different treatment: Ex toto non sic pueri ut viri curari debent ("In general, boys should not be treated in the same way as men"). Some of the oldest traces of pediatrics can be discovered in Ancient India where children's doctors were called kumara bhrtya.
Even though some pediatric works existed during this time, they were scarce and rarely published due to a lack of knowledge in pediatric medicine. Sushruta Samhita an ayurvedic text, composed during the sixth century BC contains the text about pediatrics.
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