Won’t Someone Think Of The Children?
When you hear that there was a time when people thought babies didn’t feel pain, you might assume it was back in Victorian times when people thought you’d wind up brain-damaged by riding a train with a speed limit slower than most of today’s streets, but no, even in 1999 doctors thought babies were impervious to pain until they hit their first birthday.
People incorrectly believed that responses we interpreted as expressing pain were merely reflexes. They also thought infants’ nervous systems weren’t developed enough to register discomfort. A distraught mom in the mid-80s campaigned for awareness of infant pain after her son was given open heart surgery without anesthesia, leading to more studies revealing that babies feel pain.