Luther Emmett Holt

After graduating from medical school in 1880, Luther Emmett Holt decided to devote his career to the care and treatment of children, a specialty not yet formally recognized in the medical field. In 1889, at age 34, he became the first director of the newly established “Babies Hospital,” the first hospital in New York City devoted to caring for children. Focused on the diseases and illnesses of children, Dr. Holt is credited with establishing a scientific basis for the field of pediatrics and he became one of the world’s leading and most influential pediatricians.

The son of farmers, Holt was born and raised in Webster, New York. After medical school he did an internship at the “Ruptured and Crippled Hospital” in New York City. His treatment of children there steered him into the newly developing field of pediatrics and ultimately led him the Babies Hospital. While at Babies Hospital he wrote The Care and Feeding of Children: A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses, which ultimately went through 75 reprintings, was translated into numerous languages and became an international best-seller. His follow up book, The Diseases of Infants and Children, was even more influential, the thousand-plus page text becoming the standard pediatric textbook for the next 50 years, “lifting child sickness and care out of the neglect of the past.”

Dr. Holt was a stern and dedicated clinician. In the words of his biographer, Dr. Peter Dunn: “Holt was a small man. His voice was quiet and clear and his movements alert and quick. Always immaculately dressed, he rarely smiled or laughed and appeared to be driven by a stern sense of duty. Hard working, efficient, thorough, and meticulous in his work, he also possessed sound judgment, intellectual honesty, and a total dedication to the welfare of his patients. Children were treated as individuals. He remarked that ‘the best way to make friends with a child is not to try.’ He was not interested in speculation, nor was he possessed of an imaginative mind. His approach was always intensely practical and concerned with knowledge that might help to solve problems. Besides being a great clinician, he was also a born teacher. His interests extended beyond the illnesses of children to a wish to ensure that they grew up healthy—physically, mentally, and morally. In this he was decades ahead of most of his contemporaries throughout the world. Holt developed fixed routines in management which were applied with vigor. He expected the highest standards from his assistants but never gave praise or formed close friendships. Nor was he ever unkind.”

Dr. Holt was a founder and president of the American Pediatric Society, founder and editor of the first American pediatric journal, founder of the Red Cross child health program and president of its Child Health Organization, and teacher and mentor of many of the leading pediatricians of the next generation. Although not all of Dr. Holt’s child-care recommendations have survived the test of time, his work identifying bacteria in unpasteurized milk as a cause of high infant mortality saved the lives of countless children and his work in promoting and establishing the field of pediatrics helped enable tremendous advances in the prevention and treatment of childhood diseases and infirmities.

In late 1923, Dr. Holt traveled to China, to spend a semester on the faculty of Peking Medical College, giving lectures on pediatrics. There he suffered a fatal heart attack, passing away at age 68 on January 14, 1924, ninety-nine years ago today.

His son L. Emmett Holt, Jr. also became a prominent pediatrician, serving for many years on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School.