The `Battered Child' Revisited
- Marilyn Heins, MD
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
The impact of the article "The Battered-Child Syndrome" by Drs Henry Kempe, Frederic Silverman, Brandt Steele, William Droegemueller, and Henry Silver, which appeared in The Journal on July 7, 19621 —and the speed with which this impact was felt throughout the land —were truly astonishing. Within four years of the publication of this LANDMARK ARTICLE, all but one state had adopted child abuse reporting statutes.2
Others had suspected the existence of child abuse, and a few previous articles on this subject had been published in the medical literature. Two things made this article different. First, the title. How can a nation ignore an entity called "the battered-child syndrome"? Second, the paper was submitted to the widely circulated Journal of the American Medical Association so that the majority of practicing physicians read about child abuse and the press quickly took note.
This perspective will cover four topics: (1) What
Footnotes
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Reprint requests to Office of the Vice Dean, University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, AZ 85724 (Dr Heins).
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A commentary on Kempe CH, Silverman FN, Steele BF, et al: The battered-child syndrome. JAMA 1962;181:17-24.
