Table of Contents

ABSTRACT

In this issue of JAMR we celebrate the complexities of the human lung with emphasis on, over eons of time, how we learned about concepts of pulmonary physiology and its impact on pulmonology of the newborn period of life in the 21st century. We begin with knowledge first written down in ancient archives of millennium BCE. Many scholars are considered over the past 4,000 years but modern knowledge of newborn pulmonology focusing on perinatal care probably initiates in the 19th century with the French doyen of perinatology, Stéphane Étienne Tarnier (1828-1897) along with his beloved students Pierre-Constant Budin (1846-1907) and Ribemont (Alban Alphonse Ambroise Ribemont-Dessaignes [1847-1940]) (1, 2). Newborns were provided with hospital charts by the end of the 19th century due to the efforts of such icons as Parisian Professor Pierre Budin (1846-1907), the father of newborn medicine (3,4). Working in the famous Pavilion des Debiles at the Maternité in Paris, Pierre Budin collaborated with chief midwife (Madame Henry) and developed a premature infant department dealing with issues of feeding, temperature control and disease management (5).