The Evolution of the Child Maltreatment Literature

• child maltreatment
• literature appraisal
• abusive head trauma

The first descriptions of the injuries associated with child abuse are commonly attributed to the French pathologist Auguste Ambroise Tardieu.^1,2 His “Étude médico-légale sur les sévices et mauvais traitements exercés sur des enfants” (Forensic Study on Cruelty and the Ill Treatment of Children) in 1860³ described findings of child fatalities from “acts of cruelty and ill treatment, of which young children fall victim from their parents, their schoolmasters, and all who exert over these children some degree of authority.”² John Caffey reintroduced the study of child abuse in 1946⁴ when he described 6 infants with chronic subdural hematomas in whom he identified long bone fractures from an “obscure” traumatic origin. Fredrick Silverman, a junior associate of Caffey’s,⁵ collaborated with C. Henry Kempe and colleagues in …

Address correspondence to Christopher Greeley, MD, MSB 2.104, 6431 Fannin St, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030. E-mail: christopher.s.greeley{at}uth.tmc.edu