Modern medicine has enabled citizens of wealthy, industrialized nations to forget that children once routinely died in shocking numbers. Teaching 19th-century English literature^[1], I regularly encounter gutting depictions of losing a child, and I am reminded that not knowing the emotional cost of widespread child mortality is a luxury.

In the first half of the 19th century, between 40% and 50% of children^[2] in the U.S. didn’t...