Difference between revisions of "426--Week 2 Questions/Comments--Thursday"
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(→Extra Credit: What did the President's inaugural address say (directly or indirectly) about American families and individuals?) |
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I have to say that I was incredibly excited about reading this essay because medicine and midwifery in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth incredibly fascinating. (It probably doesn't help that I do first-person interpretation of medicine in this time period.) So that brings me to Ashley's comment about women starting to give birth on their backs rather than in squatting or sitting positions, and Joseph's comment on the fact that they were suddenly letting men into the "lying-in." Scholten doesn't mention this until halfway through the piece, but it wasn't until the end of the eighteenth century that obstetric forceps came into widespread use, nearly a century after their initial conception. Such instruments fell into the realm of the doctor rather than the midwife, and women were seen as less able to understand and facilitate the same things that men were, thus women were pushed out of the birthing room. Subsequently, women were made to lie on their backs to allow their male physician to use equipment to examine them, of which the forceps are an example. Personally, I think that such changes were nearly useless at the time, because other than extreme cases the physicians could only do a little more than the midwives. -Lacey | I have to say that I was incredibly excited about reading this essay because medicine and midwifery in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth incredibly fascinating. (It probably doesn't help that I do first-person interpretation of medicine in this time period.) So that brings me to Ashley's comment about women starting to give birth on their backs rather than in squatting or sitting positions, and Joseph's comment on the fact that they were suddenly letting men into the "lying-in." Scholten doesn't mention this until halfway through the piece, but it wasn't until the end of the eighteenth century that obstetric forceps came into widespread use, nearly a century after their initial conception. Such instruments fell into the realm of the doctor rather than the midwife, and women were seen as less able to understand and facilitate the same things that men were, thus women were pushed out of the birthing room. Subsequently, women were made to lie on their backs to allow their male physician to use equipment to examine them, of which the forceps are an example. Personally, I think that such changes were nearly useless at the time, because other than extreme cases the physicians could only do a little more than the midwives. -Lacey | ||
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| + | I really enjoyed reading this essay. It was rather interesting to read about the start of our customs regarding childbirth. I was amazed to find that males quickly took over this profession and women soon preferred to switch over to the more modern practices as medicine improved. It is strange that now many women turn to older practices and choose a midwife over conventional methods of childbirth. - Kellye Sorber | ||
== Paul Johnson == | == Paul Johnson == | ||
