"To make the child healthy". Principles of child care in K.I. Grum-Grzhimailo works

Abstract

Kondratiy Ivanovich Grum-Grzhimailo (1794–1874), Doctor of Medicine, public figure, the publisher of the “Friend of Health” newspaper, author of a number of works on medicine, was one of the leading Russian doctors who contributed to the development in Pediatrics in Russia. The most significant work by K.I. Grum-Grzhimailo, “Guide to the Upbringing, Education, and Preservation of Children’s Health”, published in 1843–1844, contains the basic provisions on childhood hygiene typical of the mid-19th century. His works provide recommendations on the proper management of nutrition, conditions for keeping a child, maintaining and preserving children’s health, both physical and mental. The article analyzes Dr. Grum-Grzhimailo contribution to the formation of hygienic ideas about child care, and studies in detail his views on childhood hygiene, outlined in the “Guide to the Upbringing, Education, and Preservation of Children’s Health”. In K.I. Grum-Grzhimailo works a trend being still relevant today can be traced, which is aimed at popularizing advanced knowledge about childhood, publishing literature aimed not only at parents, but also at other adults interacting with children such as educators, nannies, teachers. Based on the works of K.I. Grum-Grzhimailo, materials from the newspaper “Friend of Health”, and archival data on the specialist’s activities, the authors of the article come to the conclusion about the importance of the paradigm he formulated, based on up-to-date medical data for its time and implying comprehensive attention to the physical and moral development of the child, for the development of childhood hygiene in the Russian Empire.