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Droits des enfants au XXe siècle

 | 
David Niget
, 
Yves Denéchère

Troisième partie. Protection et soin

The Historical Construction of Medical Neglect in the United States (1900-1930)

Lynne Curry

Abstract

Quand la négligence médicale devient-elle un crime ? Quand l’incapacité des adultes à remplir leur rôle de soin devient-elle une erreur si grave que l’État doive la sanctionner ? Quand le refus de prise en charge médicale d’un enfant est-il considéré comme une forme authentique d’expression de la foi, protégée par la Constitution au titre de la liberté religieuse ? Les procès qui eurent lieu aux États-Unis à compter de 1901, intentés à des parents auteurs de négligences médicales pour des raisons religieuses, ont mis le doigt de manière urgente et concrète sur ces questions abstraites.

Testo integrale

  • 1 Peters S. F., When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law, New York, Oxford University (...)

1Do children have a right to medical care? Do parents have a legal duty to provide it to them? If so, what parental actions satisfy such an obligation? When new medical therapies emerge, are parents legally required to seek them for their children? Do children’s rights to receive medical care trump parents’ rights to refuse it when such a denial represents a central tenet of their religious faith? In the United States, such complex and difficult questions first emerged at the turn of the twentieth century when followers of several new religions rejected mainstream medicine in favor of metaphysical healing practices, including prayer and the channeling of divine healing power through laying hands on the body of the afflicted. Church members soon faced legal difficulties for violations such as failing to report contagious diseases to public health officials and practicing medicine without a license. But in 1901, J. Luther Pierson of White Plains, New York became the first parent in the United States to be criminally prosecuted when his adopted eighteen-month old daughter died of pneumonia. As a follower of the Chicago-based faith healer John Alexander Dowie, who had declared a “holy war” against doctors and mainstream medicine, Pierson argued that his refusal to seek a physician’s care had been informed by his religious faith and thus enjoyed the protection of the U. S. Constitution. The State of New York, however, successfully prosecuted Pierson for the crime of manslaughter, a conviction then upheld by a court of appeal. By 1910, criminal prosecutions of parents for faith-based medical neglect had taken place in six different states1.

  • 2 Preston S. H., Haines M. R., Fatal Years: Child Mortality in late Nineteenth Century American, Prin (...)
  • 3 “A Faith Curist Sentenced”, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 24, 1901, p. 12.

2The emergence of medical neglect as a criminal offense reflected the convergence of several historical trends in the United States. First, the increasing authority of science in the wake of recent advances in biologically-based medicine had significantly enhanced both the political power and the cultural authority of physicians in American life. Having gained the upper hand in bringing many deadly diseases under control, physicians used the law aggressively to define and regulate the practice of medicine. The new field of pediatrics extended doctors’ authority to matters of children’s health and welfare2. Second, several new religious movements arose that challenged this growing authority of science in American life. Both Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science in 1879, and John Alexander Dowie, who established the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in 1895, gained significant followings but also courted controversy by insisting their followers make a choice between religion and medicine; compromise was impossible, according to these religious leaders. No cases engendered more public controversy than those involving the deaths of children. While many Americans respected adults’ freedom to deny themselves physicians’ care, there was much less consensus that parents had the right to place their children’s lives at risk. In 1901, then, the criminal prosecution of Pierson signaled a third historical change: states’ unprecedented willingness to enforce a parental duty to provide scientifically based medical care to children rather than relying on religious faith alone. Reacting favorably to Pierson’s conviction, the Chicago Daily Tribune (a vocal critic of the faith healer Dowie, whose church was based in that city), declared succinctly that “a sick child deserves its rights3”. Framing children’s access to scientific medical care as a legal “right”, a contention that implied a new role for the state in securing such a right, represented a profound change in Anglo-American legal tradition.

  • 4 Blackstone W., Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. I, p. 446-454. InMnookin R. H., Weisberg D (...)
  • 5 Grossberg M., Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America, Chapel Hill, (...)
  • 6 Edward Cowley, Plaintiff in Error, v. The People of the State of New York, Defendant in Error 83 N. (...)

3Prior to the 1800, courts generally deferred to the authority of fathers in matters pertaining to the children living in their households. Fathers’ vested rights to their children’s obedience, labor, and support represented foundational principles in Anglo-American common law4. But that changed dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century as courts increasingly recognized children’s special requirements for physical care and nurturing and also privileged those needs in their rulings. Judges began awarding parental custody to mothers rather than fathers, particularly in cases involving very young children, asserting that their need for intensive physical care and nurturing trumped patriarchal prerogatives. The new legal calculus inferred both that children had rights separate and apart from those of adults and that the law may be used to safeguard those rights5. New sensibilities about adults’ duties to care for children were also reflected in statutory law. In 1880, for example, a New York appeals court upheld the misdemeanor conviction of a charitable institution’s superintendent who had failed to provide “proper and sufficient medicine and medical attendance when [a] child was sick, diseased, and ailing6”. Thus the New York court affirmed that children in institutions had a legal right to receive medical care.

  • 7 See, for example, Bishop J. P., Commentaries on the Criminal Law, Vol. II, Boston, Little, Brown, (...)

4But the situation was less clear for children living in their own homes. Although a longstanding common law doctrine had obligated parents to supply, along with adequate food, clothing, shelter, and security, the provision of “physic” to their sick or injured children, American courts did not require parents to employ any particular therapeutic approach in meeting that requirement7. In the first three quarters of the nineteenth century a variety of medical sects, including homeopathy and Thomsonianism, flourished in the United States. These sects proffered differing theories about the workings of the human body, the causes of disease, and the maintenance of optimal physical health. Parents had a range of options for addressing their children’s ailments and, as long as the various options available remained equally likely to succeed or fail, their choices failed to elicit controversy.

  • 8 Stern A. M., Markel H., Formative Years: Children’s Health in the United States, 1880-2000, Ann Arb (...)
  • 9 Hammonds E. M., Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 18 (...)
  • 10 Preston S. H., Haines M. R., Fatal Years…, op. cit., p. 13; Hardy A., “Tracheotomy versus Intubatio (...)
  • 11 Davidovitch N., “Negotiating Dissent: Homeopathy and Anti-Vaccinationism at the Turn of the Twentie (...)
  • 12 Gordon L., Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, New York, Pengui (...)

5In the nineteenth century’s last decades, however, scientifically based medicine began to realize unprecedented success in combatting a number of childhood diseases. Physicians of the “regular” school soon overtook their sectarian rivals to become the dominant practitioners of medicine for children. The American Pediatric Society was founded in 1888 and nine years later Luther Emmett Holt published a widely influential textbook, The Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. By 1910, some one hundred physicians specializing in the medical care of children were associated with medical colleges throughout the United States8. Among the most notable successes of scientific medicine was the control of diphtheria, a disease that accounted for fourteen percent of all deaths of persons between five and fourteen years of age in the United States. Highly contagious, diphtheria was particularly dreaded by parents because, along with fever and a swollen neck, it produced a black fibrous membrane-like growth, called a pseudo-membrane, in its victims’ throats. Physicians developed the techniques of tracheotomy and intubation, enabling small patients to breathe and thus greatly increasing their chances for survival. Even more significantly, in 1884 bacteriologists identified the bacillus that caused diphtheria and within ten years an antitoxin became generally available. Two years later, the American Pediatrics Society commissioned a study of the new antitoxin that found a mortality rate of only 12.3 percent among 5,794 cases; even more encouraging, when antitoxin was administered within three days of the disease’s onset, the mortality rate fell to 7.3 percent9. Within ten years, a preventive vaccine came into use10. Such triumphs of what was now mainstream medicine raised the question of whether adults had a legal obligation to use the new therapies to protect their children’s health. In 1905, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Massachusetts father’s argument that a compulsory vaccination order during a smallpox epidemic violated his constitutional right to refuse the procedure for himself and his child11. In 1910, a family court judge in the same state interpreted the statutory definition of “neglect” to include parents’ failure to prevent the treatable conditions of ophthalmia neonatorum and bowed shinbones in their children12.

  • 13 Poloma M. M., “A Comparison of Christian Science and Mainline Christian Healing Ideologies and Prac (...)
  • 14 “An Important Decision”, Christian Science Journal, Vol. 16, September 1898, p. 405-416; “Construc (...)
  • 15 “X-Practice Declared Legal”, The Quincy Daily Whig, October 9, 1904, p. 2.

6The law also grappled with the question of whether parents who relied exclusively on religious healing methods met their obligations to protect their children’s health. In addition to prayer, followers of Christian Science employ healers who are trained and certified solely by the church, which teaches that sickness does not exist—instead, symptoms are a manifestation of the sufferer’s inability to understand the power and goodness of God. Christian Science practitioners, who are paid for their services, employ a mental therapy in which they silently “argue” that the ailment is unreal, either in the presence of the patient or else while remaining at a distance, a practice the church calls “absent treatment”. Christian Scientists also believe that illness can be transferred through fear and doubt of God’s power, through a process they call “malicious animal magnetism”. The church teaches that children’s apparent disease states are actually the manifestation of their parents’ fears and lack of understanding13. In 1898, the Rhode Island Supreme Court decided that a Christian Science practitioner who advertised himself as a “doctor” had not violated that state’s medical practice laws, ruling that the statutory language “must be construed to relate to the practice of medicine as ordinarily and popularly understood”, which did not include “simply praying” for the patient’s recovery14. The ruling may have exempted Christian Science practitioners from state licensing requirements, but it created a dilemma for parents who followed the church’s teachings. If the law did not regard Christian Science treatment to be the practice of medicine, could parents be charged with medical neglect for relying on it exclusively when their children fell seriously ill? Such questions were rendered more complex by variations in statutory language that existed among differing states. In 1899, for example, the Attorney General of the State of Illinois refused to indict Christian Scientist parents whose son had died of typhoid fever, determining that their sincerely held belief in the efficacy of Christian Science healing meant they had not willfully intended to cause the boy harm, as required by the state’s criminal code15.

  • 16 Peters S. F., When Prayer Fails, op. cit., p. 97.
  • 17 People of the State of New York, Respondent, v. J. Luther Pierson, Appellant, 80 A.D. 415; 81 N.Y.S (...)
  • 18 People of the State of New York, Appellant, v. J. Luther Pierson, Respondent, 176 N. Y. 201; 68 N.E (...)
  • 19 “Criminal Faith Healing,” New York Times, October 14, 1903, p 1.

7A sea-change took place in 1901 when a jury in Toronto, Canada took only twenty minutes to find the Christian Scientist father of a boy who died of diphtheria guilty of manslaughter16. Following the Canadian court’s lead, in March 1901, a New York State criminal court convicted J. Luther Pierson and imposed a fine of $ 500, which Pierson refused to pay, opting instead to serve five hundred days in a county jail. A New York appeals court, however, reversed the trial court’s decision on the grounds that the statute did not require parents to call physicians in every case of illness or injury to a child; the appropriate standard to apply in determining a parent’s culpability was what “an ordinarily prudent person” would do under the particular circumstances of the case. Justice P. J. Goodrich, however, issued a strong dissent, pointing out that at trial Pierson had stated that he was aware his daughter was gravely ill for a period of forty-eight hours but, following the faith-healer Dowie’s proscription against doctors, he had nevertheless chosen not to seek a physician’s care; thus Pierson’s conduct did meet the standard of willful neglect. “It was a plain refusal to obey the law which enjoined the furnishing of medical attendance to a sick child”, he maintained17. Five months later, another appeals court agreed with Justice Goodrich and reinstated Pierson’s original conviction, asserting that the “law of nature, as well as the common law, devolves upon the parents the duty of caring for our young in sickness and in health, and in doing whatever may be necessary for their care, maintenance and preservation, including medical assistance if necessary, and an omission to do this is a public wrong which the state, under its police powers, may prevent18”. Despite his legal woes, Pierson maintained his commitment to Dowie’s anti-physician teachings and a second child subsequently died in his household19.

  • 20 “Child Died Without Medical Attendance”, New York Times, October 22, 1902, p. 16; “’Scientists’ De (...)
  • 21 “Christian Scientists Win”, New York Times, March 17, 1898, p. 1; “The Christian Scientists”, New (...)
  • 22 People of the State of New York v. John Quimby and Others, 113 A. D. 793; 99 N.Y.S. 330; 1906; Pena (...)
  • 23 Christian Science and Legislation, The Christian Science Publishing Company, 1906, p. 42.
  • 24 The Facts About “Colliers”. Attack on the National League for Medical Freedom, National League for (...)
  • 25 Lindenmeyer K., “A Right to Childhood”: The U.S. Children’s Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-1946, Ur (...)

8In October 1902, the death of seven-year-old Esther Quimby, also in New York, attracted considerable public controversy, both because the child died of diphtheria without mainstream medical attendance and because her parents, Christian Scientists John and Georgianna Quimby, failed to report the contagious disease to local health officials, thereby endangering their neighbors; two other children and Mrs. Quimby herself also contracted the disease. The coroner’s examination found “enough diphtheria to infect an entire community” in the membrane that had grown in Esther’s throat, and determined the official cause of death to be “diphtheria and Christian Science neglect”. The Quimbys, along with the Christian Science healer who had attended the girl, were subsequently indicted on charges of second-degree manslaughter20. Awaiting trial the Quimbys, who had lost four of their seven children, filed a demurer arguing they had not neglected Esther’s illness because they had obtained the services of a religious healer recognized by their church and therefore had satisfied their legal obligation to provide medical care to their child21. They also insisted that a court of law could not make a definitive medical determination that diphtheria antitoxin would have saved Esther’s life. In 1905, a county judge agreed with the Quimbys and dismissed their case22. The judge’s ruling reflected the ambivalence many Americans felt about using the criminal law to intrude on parental prerogatives over their children’s medical care, particularly when parents’ choices were rooted in their religious beliefs. “Who is to decide this question?” inquired a 1906 Christian Science publication. “Shall it be decided beforehand by the majority of a group of gentlemen under the gilded dome of a State-house? Or shall the choice be left with the child’s parents, who are its natural guardians, who are at the bedside and to whom the little one’s life means more than it does to all other persons23?” In 1910, dissenters of a variety of stripes, both religious and secular, united to form the National League for Medical Freedom, challenging the proliferation of what it characterized as “unjust, oppressive, paternal and un-American laws” that restricted parents’ rights to choose healing methods for themselves and their children24. Even the United States Children’s Bureau, a federal government agency founded in 1912 to promote child welfare, limited its activities to studying and disseminating information concerning children’s health and promoting parents’ voluntary cooperation with health care practitioners. Although it frequently employed a rhetoric of children’s “rights”, the Bureau did not pursue an agenda to secure children’s legal claim to receive medical care from their parents25.

  • 26 “Christian Scientists in Meshes of Law”, Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1902; “Child Died Under C (...)

9Such wariness about over-reaching state power was also evident in criminal trials when juries acquitted parents prosecuted for medical neglect. In August, 1902, five-year-old Sarah Reed died of diphtheria in Los Angeles, California, and three months later her parents, Christian Scientists Merrill and Clara Reed, found themselves charged with a misdemeanor under the California law. In addition to seeking the aid of several Christian Science practitioners during their daughter’s illness, the Reeds had twice called a medical doctor to their home, who examined the child and diagnosed malignant diphtheria, advising that Sarah be treated immediately with antitoxin, which the Reeds refused. The physician testified that, worried about the child, she had subsequently telephoned the Reeds, who told her that the little girl was not actually ill. The defense called several Christian Science practitioners to the witness stand. One testified that Sarah had been “getting along nicely and seemed bright enough”, even within twenty minutes of her death. A second attendant claimed that the child’s choking and gasping for breath did not indicate the presence of diphtheria but instead reflected the “crude state” of her parents’ minds because they failed to understand the unreality of sickness. Another Christian Science practitioner claimed to have attended a previous case in which diphtheria antitoxin was administered and she herself became ill through the workings of malicious animal magnetism. Several other witnesses attested to experiencing successful healings under the care of the church’s practitioners. After hearing this extensive testimony on behalf of Christian Science beliefs about the nature of health and illness, the jury acquitted the Reeds, determining that they had not willfully intended harm to their daughter—despite the physician’s clear warning that Sarah would die without receiving antitoxin. The Reed case demonstrated the dilemma of defining medical neglect under the law when parents’ religious beliefs denied the empirical basis of both illness and its treatment26.

  • 27 James Bradley, Plaintiffin Error, v. The State of Florida, Defendant in Error, 79 Fla. 651; 84 So. (...)

10In 1920, a Florida appeals court reversed the manslaughter conviction of a father who had refused to provide medical assistance to his daughter who had died of severe burns. At trial James Bradley testified he was “trusting to the Lord for the healing of the body”. In rendering the court’s opinion, Chief Justice Brown asserted that, “until the practice of medicine becomes an exact science so that it can be established beyond the peradventure of a doubt that death would not have ensued if a physician had been in attendance, I think the answer to [questions concerning parents’ culpability under the law] must be an unqualified ‘NO’”. Another justice, however, vigorously dissented. “That it is the legal duty of a father, who is able to do so, to furnish necessary medical attention for his child seems to be well settled”, wrote Justice West. Florida law, he pointed out, made the failure to provide “necessaries” for the care of children a misdemeanor. While governments may not interfere with individuals’ religious beliefs, Justice West insisted, they may prohibit specific practices that conflict with the secular law27.

  • 28 National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse and National District Attorney Association, Reli (...)
  • 29 Asser S. M., Swan R., “Child Fatalities from Religious-Motivated Medical Neglect”, Pediatrics, Vol. (...)

11The conflicting views expressed in the Bradley ruling reflected American society’s struggle to realign its values in the wake of both advances in medical science and changing notions about the inherent rights of children, a struggle that continued for the remainder of the twentieth century. In 1974, after pressure from religious lobbyists, the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare mandated that states include in their child neglect statutes special exemptions for parents who deny medical care on the basis of their faith. Although the Department reversed the requirement in 1983, as of 2013 such exemptions remained in place in thirty-seven states. Today, all but two states allow parents to refuse vaccination on religious grounds—including the vaccine that immunizes children against diphtheria28. Although a rare occurrence, children in the United States continue to die of faith-based medical neglect29. The vexing questions that emerged in the early twentieth century remain unanswered.

Note

1 Peters S. F., When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law, New York, Oxford University Press, 2008; Schoepflin R. B., Christian Science on Trial, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005; Rogers A., The Child Cases, Amherst and Boston, University of Massachusetts Press, 2014.

2 Preston S. H., Haines M. R., Fatal Years: Child Mortality in late Nineteenth Century American, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991; Stern A. M., Markel H., Formative Years: Children’s Health in the United States, 1880-2000, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2002.

3 “A Faith Curist Sentenced”, Chicago Daily Tribune, May 24, 1901, p. 12.

4 Blackstone W., Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. I, p. 446-454. InMnookin R. H., Weisberg D. K. (ed), Child, Family, and State, New York, Aspen Publishers, 2000, p. 255-259.

5 Grossberg M., Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1985, p. 237-286.

6 Edward Cowley, Plaintiff in Error, v. The People of the State of New York, Defendant in Error 83 N. Y. 464; 1881.

7 See, for example, Bishop J. P., Commentaries on the Criminal Law, Vol. II, Boston, Little, Brown, and Company, 1882, p. 385-391.

8 Stern A. M., Markel H., Formative Years: Children’s Health in the United States, 1880-2000, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2002, p. 50, 109.

9 Hammonds E. M., Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, p. 11, 134.

10 Preston S. H., Haines M. R., Fatal Years…, op. cit., p. 13; Hardy A., “Tracheotomy versus Intubation: Surgical Intervention in Diphtheria in Europe and the United States, 1825-1930”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, No 66, 1992, p. 536-539.

11 Davidovitch N., “Negotiating Dissent: Homeopathy and Anti-Vaccinationism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”, inJohnston R. D. (ed), The Politics of Healing: Histories of Alternative Healing in Twentieth-Century North America, New York, Routledge, 2004, p. 11-28.

12 Gordon L., Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, New York, Penguin Books, 1988, p. 127-129.

13 Poloma M. M., “A Comparison of Christian Science and Mainline Christian Healing Ideologies and Practices”, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 32, No 4, June 1991, p. 337-350; Wardell W. I., “Christian Science Healing”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 4, No 2, Spring 1965, p. 171-181.

14 “An Important Decision”, Christian Science Journal, Vol. 16, September 1898, p. 405-416; “Construction of a Statute. Practice of Medicine. Christian Science. State v. Mylod 40 Atl. Rep. (R.I.) 753”, The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 8, No 1, October 1898, p. 57.

15 “X-Practice Declared Legal”, The Quincy Daily Whig, October 9, 1904, p. 2.

16 Peters S. F., When Prayer Fails, op. cit., p. 97.

17 People of the State of New York, Respondent, v. J. Luther Pierson, Appellant, 80 A.D. 415; 81 N.Y.S. 214; 1903.

18 People of the State of New York, Appellant, v. J. Luther Pierson, Respondent, 176 N. Y. 201; 68 N.E. 243; 1903; “Murder Declared Unlawful”, New York Times, October 15, 1903, p. 8.

19 “Criminal Faith Healing,” New York Times, October 14, 1903, p 1.

20 “Child Died Without Medical Attendance”, New York Times, October 22, 1902, p. 16; “’Scientists’ Defy Coroner”, The World, October 22, 1902, p. 5; “Inquest in Quimby Case”, New York Daily Tribune, October 22, 1902, p. 6; “Faith Healers are Locked Up”, The World, October 23, 1902, p. 1; “How Prayer Failed to Cure Diphtheria”, New York Times, October 23, 1902; “Christian Scientists Held for Manslaughter”, New York Times, October 24,1902, p. 1; “Healer and Father Held”, New York Daily Tribune, October 24, 1902, p. 3; “Christian Scientists Must Stand Trial”, New York Times, October 31, 1902, p. 1.

21 “Christian Scientists Win”, New York Times, March 17, 1898, p. 1; “The Christian Scientists”, New York Times, November 13, 1898, p. 12.

22 People of the State of New York v. John Quimby and Others, 113 A. D. 793; 99 N.Y.S. 330; 1906; Penal Code of the State of New York, Nineteenth Edition, Albany (NY), Mathew Bender and Company, 1905, p. 37.

23 Christian Science and Legislation, The Christian Science Publishing Company, 1906, p. 42.

24 The Facts About “Colliers”. Attack on the National League for Medical Freedom, National League for Medical Freedom, no date, no page number.

25 Lindenmeyer K., “A Right to Childhood”: The U.S. Children’s Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-1946, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1997.

26 “Christian Scientists in Meshes of Law”, Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1902; “Child Died Under Christian Science”, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 1902; “Christian Scientists Won a Verdict”, Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1902; Criminal Law and Procedure of California, Los Angeles, Charles W. Balm Co., 1902, p. 180-182.

27 James Bradley, Plaintiffin Error, v. The State of Florida, Defendant in Error, 79 Fla. 651; 84 So. 677; 1920.

28 National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse and National District Attorney Association, Religious Exemptions to Child Neglect, [www.ndaa.org], accessed June 30, 2014.

29 Asser S. M., Swan R., “Child Fatalities from Religious-Motivated Medical Neglect”, Pediatrics, Vol. 101, No 4, April 1998, p. 625-629.

Autore

Professeure à l’Eastern Illinois University, où elle enseigne depuis 1996. Elle est docteure de l’University of Illinois à Urbana-Champaign. Ses recherches et publications se situent au croisement de l’histoire du droit et de l’histoire de la médecine aux États-Unis, avec un intérêt particulier pour la santé de l’enfant au regard du droit. Parmi ses publications, on compte : « “Special relationships” : the State, Social Workers, and Abused Children in the United States, 1950-1990 », inSchumann D. (ed), Raising Citizens in the « Century of the Child » : Child-rearing and Education in the United States and Central Europe in the 20th century (2010) ; The De Shaney Case : Children’s Rights, Family Privacy, and the Dilemma of State Intervention (2007) ; The Human Body on Trial : A Sourcebook with Cases, Law, and Documents (2004) ; et Modern Mothers in the Heartland : Gender, Health, and Progress in Illinois, 1900-1930 (1999).

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