I&#x27;ve just become a father and my kid has very slight jaundice, not enough to have to do anything about it. But it did get me thinking, &quot;how was jaundice dealt with before&quot;? Considering 10% (??) of kids have bad jaundice that&#x27;s a huge evolutionary pressure to either eliminate it (by favoring kids with larger livers) or somehow deal with it.<p>Well my wife&#x27;s (who&#x27;s from a third-world and (formerly) most isolated country in the world) grandma (eldest of 13) explained it to me: She&#x27;s always taken newborn&#x27;s and placed them by the window for an hour. That&#x27;ll do it!<p>Then I read the history of neonatal jaundice care and I was shocked to learn that light therapy for jaundice wasn&#x27;t  discovered until the 50s (when a doctor noticed that newborns under the care of a nurse with particular habits fared better) and widely practiced until the 70s!<p>+1 for folksy medicine!