Overview

Parents have known since time immemorial, and social scientists have agreed since the turn of the century, that adolescents are a people unto themselves--a ""distinct developmental category."" Yet it was not until the 1950s that a medical specialty specifically for teenagers came into being. In this book, Heather Munro Prescott shows how the mid-twentieth-century emergence of adolescent medicine resulted from a combination of social changes that reached far beyond the field of medicine--changes that placed teenagers themselves at the center of the national agenda. The first book to trace the history of adolescent medicine, A Doctor of Their Own draws on oral histories of physicians in the field, patient records from adolescent medical facilities, medical and popular advice literature, and letters from teenagers and their parents. Prescott examines the interplay between the emergence of adolescent medicine and changes in American family relationships, youth culture, popular perceptions about young people, and the social experience of adolescence. With special attention to the role of young people themselves in the shaping of this new discipline, her book follows the development of adolescent medicine from its origins in the work of J. Roswell Gallagher at Boston Children's Hospital in the 1950s to its uncertain prospects today, when, despite heightened recognition of their specific medical needs, most teenagers still receive inadequate health care.

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9780674214613

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Reviews

[Prescott] reviews the social and medical events that focused the national agenda on addressing problems unique to teenagers, and she relates the early work of the founder of adolescent medicine, J. Roswell Gallagher, and his clinic at the Boston Children's Hospital in 1952. The final chapter tracks the conceptual changes in adolescent medicine since the 1960s up to its establishment as a board-certified medical subspecialty of pediatrics in 1991. A well-written analysis and clear narrative of the development of adolescent medicine. -- G. Eknoyan, Choice In her fascinating study of the emergence of adolescent medicine, Heather Munro Prescott describes...the history of medicine from the perspective of social history...[She] reveals much about experts' views of adolescence and the role of medicine in coping with youthful angst, illness, and rebellion in the twentieth century...Prescott's thoughtful rendering of the interplay between teens, their parents, and medical professionals further underscores the relevance of the history of medicine to the social history of childhood and adolescence. -- Julia Grant H-Net Reviews Prescott's strengths lie in her clarity, thoroughness and willingness to expand from her case study to cover the entire century. Throughout, she pays appropriate attention to the social context within which adolescent medicine developed, so readers are taken not only through the politics of the profession but into the culture of early-twentieth-century anti-modernism and the critiques of post-Second World War suburbia. -- Matthew Hilton Medical History

Prescott's strengths lie in her clarity, thoroughness and willingness to expand from her case study to cover the entire century. Throughout, she pays appropriate attention to the social context within which adolescent medicine developed, so readers are taken not only through the politics of the profession but into the culture of early-twentieth-century anti-modernism and the critiques of post-Second World War suburbia.--Matthew Hilton Medical History

In her fascinating study of the emergence of adolescent medicine, Heather Munro Prescott describes...the history of medicine from the perspective of social history...[She] reveals much about experts' views of adolescence and the role of medicine in coping with youthful angst, illness, and rebellion in the twentieth century...Prescott's thoughtful rendering of the interplay between teens, their parents, and medical professionals further underscores the relevance of the history of medicine to the social history of childhood and adolescence. -- Julia Grant H-Net Reviews

Author Information

Heather Munro Prescott is Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University.

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