Getting Started
This guide is meant to be general a starting point to locating books on the history of childbirth in North America during the 19th century, primarily within the University of Chicago Library.
Keywords & subject headings
Try using some of the following keywords and subject headings in the Library Catalog or by using a database to find journals and articles, limiting to historical aspects or providing a time range if the database allows.
- 19th (nineteenth) century
- history of medicine
- medicine --history
- Obstetrics & Gynecology
- Obstetricians
- Obstetric Midwife
- midwifery
- midwives
- Childbirth
- Pregnancy
- Delivery
- Labor
- Labor (Obstetrics)
- Maternal health services
Resources from the University of Chicago Special Collections Resource Center
Modern manuscript and archival collections
Manuscript lecture notes on midwifery.
Handwritten notes in German (probably on birthing procedures).
Published, typed copies of formal research notes, with handwritten annotations, describing the physiology of female fertility, pregnancy, delivery, and care of infants.
Treatise in German, on the female reproductive system, fetal development, and obstetrics for midwives. Includes partial table of contents. Illustrated with pen & ink, and graphite drawings. Identified as copied in the hand of Eduard Martin, Stark's pupil and successor.
Books
What a Blessing She Had Chloroform by Call Number: Crerar Stacks RG732 .C28 1999; Also available as e-bookISBN: 0300075979Publication Date: 1999A history of the use of anaesthesia in childbirth and the interaction between medical science and social values. It discusses how 19th-century physicians began to think like scientists and how people came to reject the belief that pain was inevitable.
Lying-In: a history of childbirth in America by Call Number: Crerar Stacks RG518.U5W470 1989; Also available as an e-bookISBN: 0300040873Publication Date: 1989This lively history of childbirth begins with colonial days, when childbirth was a social event, and moves on to the gradual medicalization of childbirth in America as doctors forced midwives out of business and to the home-birth movement of the 1980's. Widely praised when it was first published in 1977, the book has now been expanded to bring the story up to date.
Hydropathic Highway to Health by Call Number: Crerar Stacks RM811.D740 1986ISBN: 0313238162Publication Date: 1986This well-organized and scholarly monograph presents a welcome contribution to medical history and the history of women in early 19th century America. The study focuses on hydropathy, or the water-cure method, that promised health if followers combined rejection of medication with a complicated hygienic routine, wholesome diet, and exercise.
Reading Birth and Death by Call Number: Crerar Stacks RG652 .M87 1998ISBN: 0253212588Publication Date: 1999The issue of who should control childbirth remains one of the outstanding problems for the women's movement, despite almost four decades of campaigning for change. This continuing relevance suggests that exercising choice and personal agency remain political struggles for each woman who faces an institutional maternity care system.
Women and Men Midwives by Call Number: Crerar Stacks RG518.U5D660ISBN: 0837198682Publication Date: 1978
Obstetric and Gynecologic Milestones by Call Number: Crerar Stacks RG51 .S683 1996ISBN: 1850706980Publication Date: 1996This is a large, carefully researched book of complete reproductions or extensive quotations from 103 milestone articles on obstetrics and gynecology with expert commentary by Dr. Harold Speert.- Delivering Motherhood byCall Number: Crerar Stacks HQ759.D430 1990ISBN: 0415020182Publication Date: 1990This volume features a series of essays which describe the way in which control over the different stages of reproduction, from conception through delivery to childcare, has shifted in Canada from the central figure of the mother to experts and professionals.
- The Science of Woman byCall Number: Crerar Stacks RG67.G7M670 1990ISBN: 0521327415Publication Date: 1990Is women's destiny rooted in their biology? Since the end of the eighteenth century the science of gynecology has legitimized the view that women are "naturally" fitted for activities in the private sphere of the family. This book argues that the definition of femininity as propounded by gynecological science is a cultural product of a wider, more political context. Providing a unique account of gynecology in practice, it shifts the historical focus from the use to the production of ideas about "women's nature."
- Women and Children First byCall Number: Crerar Stacks RG940.W660 1992ISBN: 0415080908Publication Date: 1992Examines the efforts made by The International Maternal and Infant Welfare movement at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th to reduce maternal and infant deaths in five continents from Australia, South Africa, Burma and Malaya to Britain, Holland and North America.
- A sketch of the history of obstetrics in the United States up to 1860 byCall Number: Crerar Stacks RG516.W7; also available from HathiTrust
- Brought to Bed byCall Number: Crerar Stacks RG518.U5L40 1986; Also available as an e-bookISBN: 0195038436Publication Date: 1986This book uses personal accounts by birthing women and their medical attendants to show how childbirth has changed from colonial times to the present.
- The History of Obstetrics and Gynecology byCall Number: Crerar Stacks RG51.O360 1994ISBN: 1850702241Publication Date: 1994This work offers a history of the medical fields of obstetrics and gynaecology. Divided into a modern and an ancient history section, it addresses infertility and assisted reproduction techniques in the first and covers practices in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and Arabia in the second.
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Andrea Twiss-Brooks
Director, Humanities and Area Studies
Chemistry and Geophysical Sciences Librarian
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