Signs, legibility and diagnosis: The problem of pain in childhood, 1870-1920

Abstract

This paper visits the disputed place of children pain between the late 19th Century and the early 20th Century from the perspective of the History of Emotions. It explores how the emotional expression of children suffering, chiefly represented by cries and screams, was subject to different interpretations depending on the different professional bodies invested with the performative authority required to shape its meaning. A comparison between the discourse of scientists and psychologists and that of pediatricians allows to infer how, whereas the former claimed children were essentially insensitive to pain and had in general a lower vulnerability to pain than adults, pediatricians used pain as a path to diagnose children sickness.