by Diane Morris | Aug 18, 2016 | Childbirth, Medicine
“You are all familiar with Dr. Chipman’s aphorism, ‘The process of parturition is the same in the countess as in the cow.’ Very true, but, unfortunately, the results are infinitely better in the cow than in the countess.” — Karl M....
by Diane Morris | Aug 4, 2016 | Childbirth, Medicine
“A deep, dark and continuous stream of mortality.”—William Farr, 18761 Most medical practitioners in England’s Regency era believed that miasma caused puerperal or childbed fever. The miasma was believed to arrive on foul-smelling air, to emanate...
by Diane Morris | Jul 21, 2016 | Childbirth, Medicine
My previous blog posts examined the supposed causes of childbed fever as they were understood in late 18th-century England, when Jane Austen was a teenager, and also the treatments prescribed to manage the symptoms of this often fatal disease. In reading various books...
by Diane Morris | Jul 7, 2016 | Childbirth, Medicine
My previous post on childbed fever described the widespread belief that childbed fever — what today we call puerperal infections — was mainly caused by breathing foul, noxious air that arrived on the wind, permeated hospital furniture and people’s clothing, or...
by Diane Morris | Jun 23, 2016 | Childbirth, Medicine
Earlier this month I took a detour and posted a blog about Whit Stillman’s movie Love and Friendship, which is based on Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan. With this blog I am returning to the ever-fascinating topic of Regency medicine and specifically to a...
by Diane Morris | Jun 25, 2015 | Childbirth
Any pregnant woman during the Regency period would have known what a man-midwife meant when he asked: Are you prepared to take a pain? To “take a pain” was a popular expression meaning to submit to an examination per vaginam (“via the vagina”). I found this gem in Dr....
