We all know that babies cry. To express hunger, frustration, surprise… but what about pain? There was a point in human history that doctors were taught that babies did not experience pain, and their reactions otherwise were simply a reflex. And since infants lack conscious memory, there’s no way there could be any detrimental long-term effects. For that reasoning, millions of invasive and painful procedures were performed to babies using only muscle relaxants to numb the pain. And it wasn’t until fairly recently this opinion changed… in 1985, when a mother learned her baby boy underwent open heart surgery with no anaesthesia, it sparked a movement… and by 1999 the belief that babies can’t feel pain was no longer being taught. This is a rare example of how public belief has gone full circle… prior to the late 19th century, it was accepted that infants felt pain, just like the rest of us.. We’ll end with a quote from 1656, from pediatric surgeon Felix Wurtz… “If a new skin in old people be tender, what is it you think in a newborn Babe?”