Pediatrics

Children's health care (also known as paediatrics or pediatrics) is the area of medicine that is responsible for the medical treatment of newborns, children, and teenagers. Patients are encouraged to seek paediatric treatment until they reach the age of 21 according to the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations. The term "paediatrics" in the United Kingdom refers to patients who are less than 18 years old. Pediatricians are seeing an increase in the age ranges they can treat on a global scale. A paediatrician, sometimes known as a paediatrician, is a medical practitioner who specialises in children's health. 'Pediatrics' and its cognates imply "child healer," and they are derived from two Greek words: 'pais' (meaning "child") and 'pias' (meaning "child healer") (iatros "doctor, healer"). The majority of paediatricians work at hospitals and children's hospitals, especially those who specialise in paediatric subspecialties (e.g., neonatology), as well as as outpatient primary care doctors.

The Hippocratic Corpus, which was written in the fifth century B.C. and which contains the renowned Sacred Disease, has the first recorded descriptions of child-specific medical concerns. Children's epilepsy and preterm births were among the issues covered in these papers. Aside from discussing general illnesses affecting children in their works from the first to fourth centuries A.D., Greek philosophers and physicians such as Celsus, Soranus of Ephesus, Aretaeus, Galen, and Oribasius addressed specific illnesses affecting children, such as rashes, epilepsy, and meningitis, in their works from this period. By the time Hippocrates, Aristotle, Celsus, Soranus, and Galen came around, they had recognised the distinctions between developing and mature organisms, which demanded different treatment: Ex toto non sic pueri quod viri curari debent ("In general, boys should not be treated in the same way as men").

The fact that certain paediatric works existed during this time period is a testament to the fact that paediatric medicine was still in its infancy and so underdeveloped. "De infantium aegritudinibus ac remediis," written by Paolo Bagellardo, an Italian physician in Padua in 1472, was the world's first medical treatise to be devoted solely to kid ailments. In Ancient India, where children's physicians were referred to as kumara bhrtya, some of the earliest evidence of paediatric medicine have been found. The chapter on paediatrics may be found in the Sushruta Samhita, an ayurvedic treatise written around the sixth century BC. This century also saw the publication of the Kashyapa Samhita, which is an ayurvedic treatise.