To create this website we looked at sources regarding childhood illness ranging from centuries old to less than a decade old. Our main focus was how procedures and opinions surrounding childhood illness changed as medical technologies and population demographics shifted in the industrial era. After sourcing maps from Social Explorer and putting together a Story Map and timeline of key events and milestones related to childhood illness, we were able to wrap up our project and conclude that shifting attitudes towards childhood illness during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were indicative of development and modernization. These attitudes directly attributed to new medical technologies and advancements, as well as social and medical norms that are expected of ideal American children.

In the future it would be interesting to focus on ethnographic accounts about this topic, rather than focusing on sources from scholars, doctors, and advertisements. This could include accounts from children during the time period that we focused on, or accounts from people still-living that experienced changing attitudes in pediatric healthcare during the 1900’s. It would also be interesting to expand the time period that we focused on into the mid/late 1900’s as television and magazine advertisements became mainstream alongside the rise of pop-culture and national homogenization.