Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Birth

  • Galactagogues in postpartum rituals

    Puja Persaud True Blue, Grenada, West Indies   Moder ammer sit barn (A mother breastfeeding her child). Painting by Joakim Skovgaard, 1883. Via Wikimedia. 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…

  • Fascist Italy: The Battle for Births

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Babies in a basket. Photo by Harris & Ewing, May 1923. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. “It’s up to you to create a generation of soldiers and pioneers for the defense of the empire.” – Benito Mussolini, to the women of Italy1 “Women are a charming pastime…but…

  • Obstetrical fistula: A malady hidden by shame

    Layla A. Al-Jailani Yemen   Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels. Nouria strolls across the kitchen, making lunch for her family as she does every day. Her stride is slightly wobbly, but any observer would think this was a healthy young woman. What they do not see, however, is the hidden anguish, pain, and shame…

  • Omphalos

    Margaret Nowaczyk Hamilton, Ontario, Canada   Chambered Nautilus Shell – detail. Photo by Jitze Couperus. 2008. Via Flickr CC BY 2.0 Once, I linked you to the woman who gave birth to you: for forty weeks, a twisted pearly cord, pulsing with two syncopated heartbeats, bound you two together. It fed you and gave you…

  • Rural home visit 1973

    Paul Rousseau Charleston, South Carolina, United States   The road frozen and snowflakes fluttering, I travel to a distant farmhouse—the sick in bed on her side, hair in sweat-wet crescents and vomitus on the sheets, the husband wailing, “She’s dying, she’s dying,” and a dog and three toddlers lapping milk from the linoleum—and as I…

  • A brief life

    Andrea Eisenberg  Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, United States   Photo by Luis Galvez on Unsplash  I felt his legs wiggling in the sac of warm fluid surrounding him. His body was so tiny, his kicks were like a feather passing across my fingers. But his warm, dark world was about to slip away. Did he already sense it? Or…

  • Ephesus and its renowned physicians

    L. J. Sandlow George Dunea Chicago, Illinois, United States   To visit the extensive ruins of Ephesus is to step back into the beginnings of history. The city had been founded by Ionian Greek colonists in the tenth century BC. It prevailed after an early turbulent history and was prospered initially as an independent city-state.…

  • The dream of the uterus

    F. Gonzalez-Crussi  Chicago, Illinois, United States   Front page of the book that started the debate on “the thinking uterus” at the University of Bologna: Genial days of the dialectic of women, reduced to its true principle, etc. Naples, 1763. More than one-half century ago, it was my duty to examine and describe, day in…

  • Sleep

    Sophia Wilson New Zealand   Photo by Snapwire on Pexels The fabric of sleep descends like a tired paw, turns off our lights, offers mouth-to-mouth oblivion. For a while we can pretend we’re like stars and that we don’t reside here anymore, between impossible grindstones and the birth-death quandary; We drift weightless as falling leaves,…

  • James Simpson, who made childbirth painless

    A large jolly man with broad shoulders, large hands, blue eyes, and a charismatic personality, James Young Simpson was said to have been the most popular man in Edinburgh since the death of Sir Walter Scott.1 Born in 1811 at Bathgate, he was the seventh son of a village baker in a poor family housed in…