Tag: pregnancy
-
Doctoring while pregnant
Katie TaylorOakland, California, United States “Are you sexually active?” “No, but you are,” a patient, one day in early spring, responds. Her timing is good, and the point is obvious. I am twenty weeks pregnant and showing, belly at two-thirds basketball. When I tell an older male patient I’m pregnant, he congratulates me, tells me…
-
Pregnancy and art
Bojana CokićZajecar, Serbia Pregnancy, the beginning of a new life, was historically uncommon in art. The shape of a pregnant woman does not conform to classical Greek ideals of the female figure, which may have contributed to this rarity. Over time, misconceptions about this necessary, natural phenomenon have changed, and pregnancy has become more common…
-
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…
-
Sir Norman Gregg and the German measles
Sir Norman Gregg was an Australian eye doctor who in 1941 noticed that some mothers suffering from rubella during pregnancy had babies with severe eye abnormalities. Born in 1892 in Burwood, a suburb of Sydney, Gregg studied medicine at the University of Sydney, played cricket and tennis for the state of New South Wales, and…
-
Menstrual health in early Indian medical tradition
Benjamin DarkwaEdmonton, Canada Introduction As one of the oldest medical traditions, Ayurveda has existed for about two thousand years.1 Caraka and Susruta are the most famous medical compendiums of Ayurveda. These classical texts associate diseases with the imbalance of three dosas (humors): vata (wind), kapha (phlegm), and pitta (bile). The three dosa theory, illustrated in…
-
The Queen’s quickening: The phantom pregnancies of Mary I
Eve ElliotDublin, Ireland In November 1554, the people of England believed a miracle had taken place. Resplendent on her new throne, Queen Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII, proudly revealed that she was with child. She was thirty-seven (past the usual childbearing age in the Tudor era) and had only been married to her much…
-
Aunty Felicia
Boma SomiariPort Harcourt, Nigeria I can’t stand blood. So my goal was to stay as far as I could from hospitals and all they come with. But then change came to me when Aunty Felicia came to my village with a missionary organization that chose medicine and science as the medium for their message. As…
-
A brief history of menstruation
Fangzhou LuoPortland, Oregon, United States After a few failed attempts to redirect a flirtatious student to “higher pleasures” like music, the Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Hypatia resorted to revealing where she was in her menstrual cycle to deter him. The philosopher who recorded this—Damascius—does not specify if this student was Orestes,1 who remained a…
-
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…