Luther Emmett Holt

Luther Emmett Holt (1855 to 1924) was an American pediatrician who did more than anyone of his generation to establish pediatrics as a science in the United States. Born near Rochester, New York, he took his medical degree at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1880 and became head physician of the Babies Hospital in New York in 1888. Under his leadership it became the leading pediatric hospital of its time, and the practice of keeping clinical notes by the bedside grew there into the medical chart. He surveyed the milk supplied to tenement districts, showed that high bacterial counts accounted for many infant deaths, and helped set up milk commissions for the city health department. His The Care and Feeding of Children (1894) became the standard child-rearing guide for decades and urged regimented schedules, while his Diseases of Infancy and Childhood (1896) was the leading pediatrics textbook for more than forty years. He also supported eugenic arguments in a 1913 address, a position the record should state plainly. He taught at Columbia until 1922 and died in Peking on 14 January 1924 while lecturing there.