The earliest mentions of child-specific medical problems appear in the Hippocratic Corpus, published in the fifth century B.C., and the famous Sacred Disease.

From the first to fourth centuries A.D., Greek philosophers and physicians Celsus, Soranus of Ephesus, Aretaeus, Galen, and Oribasius, also discussed specific illnesses affecting children in their works, such as rashes, epilepsy, and meningitis.

[6] Islamic Golden Age writers served as a bridge for Greco-Roman and Byzantine medicine and added ideas of their own, especially Haly Abbas, Yahya Serapion, Abulcasis, Avicenna, and Averroes.

[14][5] In sequence came Bartholomäus Metlinger's Ein Regiment der Jungerkinder 1473, Cornelius Roelans (1450–1525) no title Buchlein, or Latin compendium, 1483, and Heinrich von Louffenburg (1391–1460) Versehung des Leibs written in 1429 (published 1491), together form the Pediatric Incunabula, four great medical treatises on children's physiology and pathology.

[26] In other European countries, the Charité (a hospital founded in 1710) in Berlin established a separate Pediatric Pavilion in 1830, followed by similar institutions at Saint Petersburg in 1834, and at Vienna and Breslau (now Wrocław), both in 1837.

The clinician must take into account the immature physiology of the infant or child when considering symptoms, prescribing medications, and diagnosing illnesses.

[30][31][32] Despite completed studies and reviews, continual research is needed to better understand how these factors should affect the decisions of healthcare providers when prescribing and administering medications to the pediatric population.

Neonates and young infants have increased stomach pH due to decreased acid secretion, thereby creating a more basic environment for drugs that are taken by mouth.

Therefore, the absorption of these drugs in children is greater than in adults due to decreased breakdown and increased preservation in a less acidic gastric space.

[31][32] Pediatric patients have underdeveloped proteins, which leads to decreased metabolism and increased serum concentrations of specific drugs.

[31] Percentage of total body water and extracellular fluid volume both decrease as children grow and develop with time.

Pediatric patients thus have a larger volume of distribution than adults, which directly affects the dosing of hydrophilic drugs such as beta-lactam antibiotics like ampicillin.

[31] In infants and young children, the larger relative size of their kidneys leads to increased renal clearance of medications that are eliminated through urine.

[citation needed] The term autonomy is traceable to ethical theory and law, where it states that autonomous individuals can make decisions based on their own logic.

[35] Since mothers could not rely on professional medicine to take care of their children, they developed their own methods, such as using alkaline soda ash to remove the vernix at birth and treating teething pain with opium or wine.

Ancient Greeks and Romans sometimes even killed healthy female babies and infants with deformities since they had no adequate medical treatment and no laws prohibiting infanticide.

As a result, in Argentina, the new National Civil and Commercial Code has enacted various changes to the healthcare system to encourage children and adolescents to develop autonomy.

[37] Technology has made several modern advancements that contribute to the future development of child autonomy, for example, unsolicited findings (U.F.s) of pediatric exome sequencing.

However, the parents contend that genetic testing would benefit the welfare of their children since it would allow them to make better health care decisions.

[39] Exome sequencing for children and the decision to grant parents the right to request them is a medically ethical issue that many still debate today.

Aspiring medical students will need 4 years of undergraduate courses at a college or university, which will get them a BS, BA or other bachelor's degree.

After completing the 3 years of residency, physicians are eligible to become certified in pediatrics by passing a rigorous test that deals with medical conditions related to young children.

[citation needed] In high school, future pediatricians are required to take basic science classes such as biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry, and calculus.

It is also advisable to learn a foreign language (preferably Spanish in the United States) and be involved in high school organizations and extracurricular activities.

Entrants to graduate-entry courses (as in the US), usually lasting four or five years, have previously completed a three- or four-year university degree, commonly but by no means always in sciences.

In the United States, a medical school graduate wishing to specialize in pediatrics must undergo a three-year residency composed of outpatient, inpatient, and critical care rotations.

Subspecialties include critical care, gastroenterology, neurology, infectious disease, hematology/oncology, rheumatology, pulmonology, child abuse, emergency medicine, endocrinology, neonatology, and others.

In other jurisdictions, junior medical doctors must undertake generalist (unstreamed) training for a number of years before commencing pediatric (or any other) specialization.