‘Ordering the infant’

Abstract

In 1985 in his groundbreaking article, 'The patient's view: doing history from below' , Roy Porter demanded historians re-evaluate their methodological approach to doing medical history and consider patient experience. In his five 'broad guidelines for future investigations', Porter complained that historians were overly concerned with diagnosis and cure. Instead, he suggested scholars turn their attention to the everyday acts of health care; the preventative measures individuals took to ward against disease. Porter opined, 'We commit gross historical distortions if we fail to give due weight and attention to traditional medical interest in the weather, in diet, in exercise, in sleep-or, in other words, in the whole field of "non-naturals". ' 1 Roy Porter's work became field-defining, but while the patient-centred approach has become dominant, few have taken to Porter's other recommendation. Until recently there has been little concerted attempt to redress the relative historical silence on the role of the Non-Naturals in early modern regimes of care, or to properly integrate practices aimed at promoting longevity into extant histories of the way bodies were experienced. 2 The ebb and flow of humours were central to the way early modern people understood the body and the way it functioned. 3 Health was dependent on the air one breathed, how one slept, the movements the body made, what one ate and drank, the regularity of excretion and the 3