A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future

In A Good Time to Be Born, Perri Klass reminds us that the modern expectation that almost all our children will live to grow up and lead healthy lives is very modern indeed. Through her trademark engaging narrative, Klass takes us through the scientific, medical, public health, and literary stories that reveal the devastation of early childhood disease and death throughout history – and the heroic and brilliant work that have nearly eliminated that scourge in developed countries today. This is a magnificent book, with a scope and depth only possible from Klass, a pediatrician, journalist, novelist, and children’s literacy advocate. She offers hope during this current pandemic that humanity has prevailed against great life-threatening challenges before – and will again.

This book traces the development of pediatric medicine from the 19th century to today and as the title implies, children living today live in a time of safety and prosperity unprecedented in human history. The book begins in the mid-19th century focusing on the ubiquity of death among infants and children and how the loved ones of these children dealt with the devastating loss. Childhood death was such a common occurrence at this time that it was a popular topic in pop culture at that time. It was depicted in several works of literature and works of art. While, just like today, those on the margins of society suffered from it disproportionately, no one was completely safe from it. The author gives several examples of prominent people such as Charles Darwin, Harriet Beacher Stowe, and W.E.B Dubois who experienced the loss of a child. Before the advent of effective treatments and vaccines, no child was safe from the scourages of common communicable diseases. Despite the grim beginning of the book, however, Klass's story is one of progress. From the bleak early 19th century she paints a picture of scientific progress to the point that many diseases that once struck fear into the hears of new parents are virtually unknown to us today. As the book progresses it uses a combination of specific examples from medical history to show this progress. Starting with the earliest attempts to confront challenges like smallpox and child malnutrition to the development of the Chicken Pox vaccine in the late 1990s. What makes the story especially interesting is the author's stories and anecdotes from her own career as a pediatrician spanning over 3 decades. She points out that a century ago, it would have been a minor miracle for a child to make it to age 5 without being afflicted with one of several different diseases that put their lives at risk. The focus of medicine at the time was to save the lives of these children. Now that such illnesses are no longer prominent the work of pediatricians has shifted to treating what are considered quality-of-life illnesses such as the proper development of the child. But despite this progress, the author warns, we should not become lax as many childhood illnesses are making a comeback due to the recent increase in vaccine hesitancy. The book ends with a warning that while the bad old days of high infant mortality from illness are in the past, that does not mean that they will not come back if given the chance. This book is an interesting and very readable story about medical history as well as a memoir of one physician’s very interesting career. Klass’s book is very readable and highly recommend it.

Excellent. Impressive research and delivered in a fascinating narrative about the medical history child mortality.