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The twentieth century will probably be recognized as the one in which great advance has been made in the understanding of children. All kinds of child care reform have been introduced, based on investigations and scientific research. Facilities have been obtained to set up modern institutions of all types, schools, child guidance clinics, reform schools, hospital clinics and hospitals for children. Teachers have to undergo a long training, doctors a specialized training in pediatrics and parents are given the opportunity to get professional advice, help and guidance in all spheres of child care. Often such advice, as how to behave toward their children and how to handle them, is even thrust unasked upon parents. Child psychology is the backbone of all these modern attempts of child care.
It is therefore surprising to find, in looking over the literature on education and pediatrics of the former centuries, that even in the sixteenth century some of the present-day twentieth century problems were discussed and considered; and that what is only adopted now as being psychologically sound was then, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, encouraged by the leading educators and medical men of that time without the psychological knowledge and understanding of this modern age.
Breast feeding has been a problem much discussed over the centuries. Even during the last fifty years, whether an infant is better off at the mother's breast, given breast milk from another mother, or bottle fed, has been a controversial subject among obstetricians and pediatricians. While some doctors favored the mothers nursing their infants, many were of the opinion that by prescribing formulas (which secured practically the same nutritive value as mothers milk), they had the feeding situations much more under their control. In this way they avoided the irregularities of quantity and quality caused by breast feeding. Nurses, too, from their observations and close contact with the mothers