Category: Birth Pregnancy & Obstetrics
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Surgery, gynecology, obstetrics, and pain
Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Pain caused by surgical interventions is incorrectly considered an unimportant, self-limiting inconvenience. “Let them scream—it is a relief of nature,” said Benjamin Winslow Dudley, a professor of anatomy, surgery and medicine at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky from 1817 to 1850. If Dudley’s unanesthetized patients squirmed during an operation, he would…
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Ian Donald: Ultrasound pioneer
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Ian Donald was born in Liskeard, Cornwall, UK in 1910 of Scottish ancestry. His father was a general practitioner. He was educated in Scotland at Fettes College and spent a brief period in South Africa from 1925 to 1930, where he studied for a BA degree in Cape Town, before entering…
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Credé’s maneuver
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Carl Siegmund Franz Credé (1819–1892) was a German gynecologist and obstetrician born in Berlin. In 1852, he became director of the Berlin School of Midwives and head of the maternity division of the Berlin Charité Hospital. Later, he moved to Leipzig. Credé is known for the Credé maneuver, a technique to…
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The history of fertility preservation in young people with cancer
Terrence StephensonLondon, England A whole cohort of cancer survivors owe both their lives and the conception of their children to a group of pediatric oncologists and colleagues from many disciplines spanning medicine, science, and the humanities. Their work brought to fruition and revolutionized the long-term care of childhood cancer survivors around the world and is…
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A cesarean section in Uganda in 1879
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “A strange story indeed, almost too good to be true.”1 Until the end of the nineteenth century, a cesarean section to deliver an infant was considered to be an operation with much risk and little success. In England, some physicians “doubted if a cesarean section was ever justified.”2 The first successful cesarean…
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Galactagogues in postpartum rituals
Puja PersaudTrue Blue, Grenada, West Indies Having a baby demands drastic changes in lifestyle, eating habits, and sleeping patterns. Many cultures across the world practice postpartum rituals that “allow the mother to be ‘mothered’,” and help to “facilitate the transition into motherhood.”1 For generations, the Indian descendants residing in Guyana of South America have helped…
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Posthumous reproduction
Ian CookeSheffield, England Family structures ensure that one’s genes are passed down through generations, but that does not always go according to plan. The opportunity may not arise because childhood or adolescent disease, notably cancer but also infections or trauma, may supervene. In 1996, I was doing a clinic late in the afternoon when I…
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Dr. Doyen separates conjoined twins in 1902
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.”– Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Eugène Louis Doyen, M.D. (1859–1916), was an internationally known Parisian surgeon. He was a “skilled and innovative physician,”1 famous for his dexterity and the speed of his operations.2 He wrote a…
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Miscarriage: A medical student in a rural clinic, Central America, 1977
Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States Elena sits perched on a gurney with claret-stained thighs. She has just miscarried in the clinic’s lavatory. She inquires of the gender of the fetus, and hands twitching and heart flapping, I blurt, unexpectedly and duplicitously (for I could not know), “Una bebita.” A little girl. A guttural sob…
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Justine Siegemund, opening doorways to midwifery
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States In the mid-1600s, midwife Justine Siegemund was a household name for mothers in Silesia, part of modern-day Poland. She served patients of every class in Legnica, in Berlin, and beyond, and published an obstetric manual which became one of the most popular midwifery books of its time. Details on her…