From Midwives to Medicine: The Birth of American Gynecology

Front Cover
Rutgers University Press, 1998 - Biography & Autobiography - 273 pages
From Midwives to Medicine examines the development of modern medical treatment of women and the related history of women's health in the mid-1800s. McGregor looks not only at the medical figures who devised and practiced the innovative therapist, but also at the history of the patient experience in the development and the professionalization of a medical specialty. In exploring the controversial career of J. Marion Sims, "the father of gynecology," and the history of the Woman's Hospital of the State of New York, McGregor chronicles the emergence of a practice involving previously untried medical techniques and the use of experimentation on patients according to a social hierarchy based on race and sex.

Using patient records and archival material from the female governors and administrators at the hospital, From Midwives to Medicine shows how a new medical practice developed out of the changing patterns and historical experiences of childbirth, as well as out of the context of the social relations f the sexes. Sim's patients were slave women in the antebellum South, poor Irish immigrants in the industrial North, and upper-class white. Protestant, Manhattan socialites who sought help for their "hysterical" symptoms. During his career, which began in the South and flourished at the Women's Hospital in New York. Sims performed and perfected his technique to "cure" vesico-vaginal fistulas, the tears of childbirth, from which so many women suffered. But Sims achieved these successes on the operating table only after years of practicing his "silver suture" technique on unanesthetized slave women, who he believed "by the nature of their race... had a specific physiological tolerance for pain unknown to whites."

 

Selected pages

Contents

1
1
4
2
Peoples and Places
8
Anarcha Betsey and Lucy
33
Missions and Medicine
69
First Womans Hospital
73
The logo for the Womans Hospital Association
87
Patients and Practice
105
13
169
14
172
ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES 17 Illustrations Home of Simss first patients in Montgomery Alabama J Marion Sims with Anarcha Betsey and Luc...
173
Ward at the Womans Hospital Uniformed nurse with patient in Simss Position receiving anesthesia
182
Cottages around the Wetmore Pavilion built to prevent contagion
194
and hospitalism Elizabeth Cullum member of the Board of Lady Supervisors at the Womans Hospital
211
Stained glass window in the chapel of the Womans Hospital
212
30
226

Sims and Margaret Brennan illustrating the steps of vesicovaginal fistula surgery and the Simss Position
106
7
107
Chart on the origins of vesicovaginal fistula 8
114
A School for Gynecologists
126
Thomas Addis Emmet
128
Anterior view of female pelvis 11
134
Ancillary view of female pelvis
135
Power Politics and Profession
167
Baldwin and Wetmore Pavilions
168
70
227
87
229
106
231
114
237
127
248
135
254
168
264
210
265
Copyright

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From Midwives to Medicine: The Birth of American Gynecology
Deborah Kuhn McGregor
No preview available - 1998

Common terms and phrases

activity African American argued Association became become began birth Board body Bozeman called cause cervix changes child childbirth clinical College condition culture death described disease disorders doctors Doremus early Emmet especially established experience fact female gained gynecology hand helped important individual infant instance institution involved Irish John Journal known labor Lady later lives managers Marion Sims Mary medical practice medicine moral moved never nineteenth century Notes obstetrics operation organs origins particularly patients Peaslee performed period physicians political population position practice practitioners published race records reform reported result rickets role School sexual Sims's slave slavery social society South Southern Story success suffered suggested surgeon surgery surgical sutures technique therapies Thomas throughout tion treat treatment United University Press uterus vaginal various vesico-vaginal fistula Woman's Hospital women York City

References to this book

About the author (1998)

McGregor is an associate professor of history and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Bibliographic information

QR code for From Midwives to Medicine
TitleFrom Midwives to Medicine: The Birth of American Gynecology
From Midwives to Medicine: The Birth of American Gynecology, Deborah Kuhn McGregor
AuthorDeborah Kuhn McGregor
Editionillustrated
PublisherRutgers University Press, 1998
ISBN0813525721, 9780813525723
Length273 pages
Subjects › 

Biography & Autobiography / General
Medical / History
  
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