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Benjamin Spock: the public paediatrician
Benjamin Spock: the public paediatrician Dr Spock An American Life Thomas Maier. New York. Harcourt Brace. 1998. $30. Pp 484. ISBN 0-15-100203-7. homas Maier’s book was completed just before the death of Benjamin Spock in March, 1998, which was a few weeks short of his 95th birthday. From many hours of interviews with Spock and members of his family, Maier has written a fascinating and detailed biography of one of the most charismatic doctors of modern history. Spock’s success as a paediatrician
T
Reclining Male Nude
was not as an academician or scholar, but as a communicator, a public teacher and advocate for the social needs of children. People who knew him as a young man would not have been surprised by his later success. The oldest of six children of a middle-class lawyer in New Haven, his mother wanted perfection in herself as a parent and to have perfect children. Spock was a gold medallist with the Yale rowing
Benedetto Luti
The male nude is not often encountered in finished works of art before the modern era. When he does appear, it is in very specific roles in which his nudity carries a certain iconographic significance. It is only since the 19th century that the male nude has become an important subject of artistic interest. This Reclining Male Nude (c 1690–1700) by Benedetto Luti is one of many works of art showing in a travelling exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, is the current venue for The Bachelor Stripped Bare: The Male Nude in Prints and Drawings and it can be seen until Oct 11, 1998. The exhibition is divided into three thematic sections: the first is devoted to drawings from the nude model; the second explores preparatory studies from the posed model; and the third looks at works of art in which the male nude appears prominently, exploring some of the meanings of male nudity. Most of the works on display were selected from the National Gallery of Canada’s permanent collection, but there are also works on loan by private collectors.
THE LANCET • Vol 352 • September 5, 1998
team in the 1924 Olympic Games and in 1928 was first in academic standing in his graduating class from Columbia medical school. Spock’s authoritarian mother had a high regard for baby doctors and her “sudden humility in the presence of white-robed medical men greatly impressed her son”. This was the reason given by Spock for his choice of paediatrics as his medical career. His residency training was at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York during the Depression where his patients often suffered the consequences of malnutrition, neglect, and poverty. In admitting children to the hospital he learned the importance of the social history. Soon he was known for spending time with the mothers, answering their questions, and giving sound reassuring advice. To augment their income his wife took a job as an assistant in psychosomatic research. She was encouraged to undergo psychoanalysis, and the disturbing outcome of the process took Spock into his lifelong interest in psychiatry and developmental paediatrics. The ideas of Pavlov and Freud were in vogue and Spock’s additional training at the New York Psychoanalytical Institute provided him with what was then an unusual set of skills for the practice of paediatrics. In the early years of private practice in Manhattan he welcomed house calls because of the opportunity to be in the environment of the whole family. As a part-time paediatric consultant to the New York City Health Department he observed that all mothers seemed to have similar problems, including the need for basic information. His reputation as a good doctor grew and in 1938 he was invited to write a book on child care. He declined, but later it was the strong social conscience of his first wife Jane that encouraged him to write The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, first published in 1948. Spock’s book sold 50 million copies in seven editions during the remaining halfcentury of his life. Spock’s success as a popular author did not bring happiness in academic
825
DISSECTING ROOM
medical environments in Rochester, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere. His wife’s serious mental illness ran up large medical bills, and he found that he could supplement his income with articles about child rearing in women’s magazines, by public lectures, and then with regular television shows. In this way Spock became a national figure, although not a respected academic or leading paediatrician in the conventional medical sense. A study of American mothers in the mid-1950s found that two-thirds had Spock’s book on child care and 80% referred to his advice at least twice a month. Spock’s reputation was perceived to be benign and non-political, although he had developed concerns about social inequities in the early days of his medical career. As a widely respected doctor his wholesome persona was courted by politicians. He gave his endorsement for Adlai Stevenson’s presidential campaign in 1956. In 1960 he appeared on televi-
sion with Jacqueline Kennedy who announced “Dr Spock is for my husband and I am for Dr Spock”. He realised that fame had also given him a sense of public duty. During the Kennedy presidency he had ready access to the White House and was able to use his goodwill to lobby for social programmes for the well-being of children. In his public role he bec ame concerned about the potential effects of nuclear-weapons testing on children. He opposed the Vietnam war and he marched side-by-side with Martin Luther King. His arrest and conspiracy trial in 1968 for civil disobedience was a turning point in his public life. He became a target for political attacks from the right, notably by Vice-President Spiro Agnew who railed against the permissiveness of the “Spock-marked generation”. Spock’s image as one of the most dependable public figures in America was tarnished. When, in 1972, he stood against Richard Nixon as a presidential candidate for the leftward-
n 1910 the But the methods Nobel Prize in that were Physiology or available to Medicine was awarded isolate, purify, and to Albrecht Kossel “for analyse the biochemical contributions to the contents of nuclein chemistry of the cell were primitive. made through his work In the 1880s, Kossel on proteins, including found that upon the nucleic subhydrolysis nuclein stances”. yielded two cleavage Kossel was born products, the already in Rostock (now known guanine, and a 1910: Albrecht Kossel Germany). He studied new product, adenine. (1853–1927) medicine in the newly By further improving founded University of Richard Altmann’s Strassburg, but never techniques of protein practised. Profoundly purification and influenced by the isolation, Kossel teachings of de Bary, obtained protein-free Waldeyer, Kundt, nucleins in 1893. Baeyer, and HoppeFrom the nuclein Seyler (under whom of the thymus gland, he worked), he devothe subsequently ed his entire career to isolated two new research in physiobases, thymine and cytosine. logical chemistry. In Although their 1883, Emil du Boisoriginal discoveries Reymond offered him have undergone the directorship of major revision, the pioneering the Chemical Division of the contributions by Miescher, Altmann, Institute of Physiology in Berlin. and Kossel profoundly influenced By combining advances in organic the growth of biochemistry as a chemistry with studies in animal fundamental discipline in the life physiology, Kossel and his colleagues sciences. explored the “chemistry of life”. In 1879, Kossel began studying the Tonse N K Raju chemical contents of nuclein, a Depar tment of Pediatrics, University nuclear substance discovered 10 of Illinois, 840 South Wood Street, years earlier by Friedrich Miescher, Chicago IL 60612, USA. another Hope-Seyler student.
The Nobel Chronicles
The Nobel Foundation
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leaning People’s Party, he mustered only 78 000 votes. The trusted doctor was not to be embraced as a public leader. Nevertheless, Maier suggests that Spock’s famous child-care book embodied the optimism of Americans in being able to conquer adversity and wanting to be better than the generation before them. Spock’s self-help guide to parenting was a tool to achieve that goal. In his personal life, Spock was certainly human. Maier’s biography describes with balance and sensitivity the difficulties that Spock experienced as a husband and father. Spock’s early interests in psychoanalysis might have attributed his personal traits to the strict upbringing by his mother, and her rules, catechisms, and obsession with fresh air. Spock quoted his mother’s Victorian prudishness to his biographer: “Benny, you do want to have normal children, don’t you?”. Benjamin Spock was a complete doctor—a skilled clinician who realised the importance of understandable health information for his patients and their families. He took advantage of his fame, not for wealth or personal power, but as a pragmatic campaigner for causes that he felt would benefit the young in society. In his pronouncements and use of communications media he moved with the times, both socially and technically. Spock’s life was well summarised in the subtitle of his 1989 autobiography—A memoir of growing up with the century.
Ray Lewkonia University of Calgar y and Alber ta Children’s Hospital, Calgar y, Canada
THE LANCET • Vol 352 • September 5, 1998
T
Reclining Male Nude
was not as an academician or scholar, but as a communicator, a public teacher and advocate for the social needs of children. People who knew him as a young man would not have been surprised by his later success. The oldest of six children of a middle-class lawyer in New Haven, his mother wanted perfection in herself as a parent and to have perfect children. Spock was a gold medallist with the Yale rowing
Benedetto Luti
The male nude is not often encountered in finished works of art before the modern era. When he does appear, it is in very specific roles in which his nudity carries a certain iconographic significance. It is only since the 19th century that the male nude has become an important subject of artistic interest. This Reclining Male Nude (c 1690–1700) by Benedetto Luti is one of many works of art showing in a travelling exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, is the current venue for The Bachelor Stripped Bare: The Male Nude in Prints and Drawings and it can be seen until Oct 11, 1998. The exhibition is divided into three thematic sections: the first is devoted to drawings from the nude model; the second explores preparatory studies from the posed model; and the third looks at works of art in which the male nude appears prominently, exploring some of the meanings of male nudity. Most of the works on display were selected from the National Gallery of Canada’s permanent collection, but there are also works on loan by private collectors.
THE LANCET • Vol 352 • September 5, 1998
team in the 1924 Olympic Games and in 1928 was first in academic standing in his graduating class from Columbia medical school. Spock’s authoritarian mother had a high regard for baby doctors and her “sudden humility in the presence of white-robed medical men greatly impressed her son”. This was the reason given by Spock for his choice of paediatrics as his medical career. His residency training was at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York during the Depression where his patients often suffered the consequences of malnutrition, neglect, and poverty. In admitting children to the hospital he learned the importance of the social history. Soon he was known for spending time with the mothers, answering their questions, and giving sound reassuring advice. To augment their income his wife took a job as an assistant in psychosomatic research. She was encouraged to undergo psychoanalysis, and the disturbing outcome of the process took Spock into his lifelong interest in psychiatry and developmental paediatrics. The ideas of Pavlov and Freud were in vogue and Spock’s additional training at the New York Psychoanalytical Institute provided him with what was then an unusual set of skills for the practice of paediatrics. In the early years of private practice in Manhattan he welcomed house calls because of the opportunity to be in the environment of the whole family. As a part-time paediatric consultant to the New York City Health Department he observed that all mothers seemed to have similar problems, including the need for basic information. His reputation as a good doctor grew and in 1938 he was invited to write a book on child care. He declined, but later it was the strong social conscience of his first wife Jane that encouraged him to write The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, first published in 1948. Spock’s book sold 50 million copies in seven editions during the remaining halfcentury of his life. Spock’s success as a popular author did not bring happiness in academic
825
DISSECTING ROOM
medical environments in Rochester, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere. His wife’s serious mental illness ran up large medical bills, and he found that he could supplement his income with articles about child rearing in women’s magazines, by public lectures, and then with regular television shows. In this way Spock became a national figure, although not a respected academic or leading paediatrician in the conventional medical sense. A study of American mothers in the mid-1950s found that two-thirds had Spock’s book on child care and 80% referred to his advice at least twice a month. Spock’s reputation was perceived to be benign and non-political, although he had developed concerns about social inequities in the early days of his medical career. As a widely respected doctor his wholesome persona was courted by politicians. He gave his endorsement for Adlai Stevenson’s presidential campaign in 1956. In 1960 he appeared on televi-
sion with Jacqueline Kennedy who announced “Dr Spock is for my husband and I am for Dr Spock”. He realised that fame had also given him a sense of public duty. During the Kennedy presidency he had ready access to the White House and was able to use his goodwill to lobby for social programmes for the well-being of children. In his public role he bec ame concerned about the potential effects of nuclear-weapons testing on children. He opposed the Vietnam war and he marched side-by-side with Martin Luther King. His arrest and conspiracy trial in 1968 for civil disobedience was a turning point in his public life. He became a target for political attacks from the right, notably by Vice-President Spiro Agnew who railed against the permissiveness of the “Spock-marked generation”. Spock’s image as one of the most dependable public figures in America was tarnished. When, in 1972, he stood against Richard Nixon as a presidential candidate for the leftward-
n 1910 the But the methods Nobel Prize in that were Physiology or available to Medicine was awarded isolate, purify, and to Albrecht Kossel “for analyse the biochemical contributions to the contents of nuclein chemistry of the cell were primitive. made through his work In the 1880s, Kossel on proteins, including found that upon the nucleic subhydrolysis nuclein stances”. yielded two cleavage Kossel was born products, the already in Rostock (now known guanine, and a 1910: Albrecht Kossel Germany). He studied new product, adenine. (1853–1927) medicine in the newly By further improving founded University of Richard Altmann’s Strassburg, but never techniques of protein practised. Profoundly purification and influenced by the isolation, Kossel teachings of de Bary, obtained protein-free Waldeyer, Kundt, nucleins in 1893. Baeyer, and HoppeFrom the nuclein Seyler (under whom of the thymus gland, he worked), he devothe subsequently ed his entire career to isolated two new research in physiobases, thymine and cytosine. logical chemistry. In Although their 1883, Emil du Boisoriginal discoveries Reymond offered him have undergone the directorship of major revision, the pioneering the Chemical Division of the contributions by Miescher, Altmann, Institute of Physiology in Berlin. and Kossel profoundly influenced By combining advances in organic the growth of biochemistry as a chemistry with studies in animal fundamental discipline in the life physiology, Kossel and his colleagues sciences. explored the “chemistry of life”. In 1879, Kossel began studying the Tonse N K Raju chemical contents of nuclein, a Depar tment of Pediatrics, University nuclear substance discovered 10 of Illinois, 840 South Wood Street, years earlier by Friedrich Miescher, Chicago IL 60612, USA. another Hope-Seyler student.
The Nobel Chronicles
The Nobel Foundation
I
826
leaning People’s Party, he mustered only 78 000 votes. The trusted doctor was not to be embraced as a public leader. Nevertheless, Maier suggests that Spock’s famous child-care book embodied the optimism of Americans in being able to conquer adversity and wanting to be better than the generation before them. Spock’s self-help guide to parenting was a tool to achieve that goal. In his personal life, Spock was certainly human. Maier’s biography describes with balance and sensitivity the difficulties that Spock experienced as a husband and father. Spock’s early interests in psychoanalysis might have attributed his personal traits to the strict upbringing by his mother, and her rules, catechisms, and obsession with fresh air. Spock quoted his mother’s Victorian prudishness to his biographer: “Benny, you do want to have normal children, don’t you?”. Benjamin Spock was a complete doctor—a skilled clinician who realised the importance of understandable health information for his patients and their families. He took advantage of his fame, not for wealth or personal power, but as a pragmatic campaigner for causes that he felt would benefit the young in society. In his pronouncements and use of communications media he moved with the times, both socially and technically. Spock’s life was well summarised in the subtitle of his 1989 autobiography—A memoir of growing up with the century.
Ray Lewkonia University of Calgar y and Alber ta Children’s Hospital, Calgar y, Canada
THE LANCET • Vol 352 • September 5, 1998