[Alphonse LeRoy and the birth of pedicatrics from the begining of the 19th century].
Although pediatrics as a specialty was not founded before the end of the 19th century, physicians showed a growing interest in childhood about a century earlier. Alphonse LeRoy (1742-1816), an obstetrician in Paris, was one of them, and little has been written on him in this context. We have endeavored to show that his work entitled "La Médecine Maternelle" (1803) is in no way less representative of this period than the much more celebrated works of the English authors Underwood or Buchan, and those of the German scholars Hecker or Hufeland.