A Regency Labor: Are You Prepared to Take a Pain?
Diane Morris | Thursday, June 25th, 2015 | Childbirth | No Comments
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. Thomas Denman’s book on the practice […]
Read More »Anne de Bourgh Sits as a Gossip: Is Society Shocked?
Diane Morris | Thursday, June 11th, 2015 | Childbirth, Jane Austen, Regency Research | No Comments
Would polite Society censure Miss Anne de Bourgh for sitting as a gossip during her friend’s delivery? This question was one of the first I asked when researching my Regency novel, Rosings Park, which is based on characters in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It isn’t an easy question to answer. Gossiping was a centuries-old […]
Read More »When Gossiping Was a Good Thing
Diane Morris | Thursday, May 21st, 2015 | Childbirth | 2 Comments
Strange as it seems to us, the word “gossip” had a friendly meaning during the Regency period and for many centuries before that: a “gossip” was a woman who attended her daughter’s or sister’s or friend’s delivery. In its original sense, the word was a corruption of “god-sib” or “god-sibling,” meaning “sister in the Lord.” During […]
Read More »Forceps Use in the Regency Era vs Today
Diane Morris | Thursday, May 7th, 2015 | Childbirth | No Comments
Forceps were invented by a surgeon in the early 17th century and gained acceptance among man-midwives or accoucheurs during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Midwives, not surprisingly, argued strongly against their use, believing the hands were Nature’s best instrument. Today forceps are still used in the delivery room, but there are questions about their […]
Read More »Battle Passionné: Midwife vs Man-Midwife
Diane Morris | Thursday, March 26th, 2015 | Childbirth | 2 Comments
Two parties waged a passionate battle throughout the Regency period and long afterward over the admittance of men to the practice of midwifery. On one side stood the midwives, who promoted patience and a reliance on Nature during delivery. On the opposing side were man-midwives or accoucheurs, who received training in anatomy, physiology, medicine and sometimes […]
Read More »Man-Midwives Behaving Badly
Diane Morris | Thursday, March 12th, 2015 | Childbirth | No Comments
It was not the case that only midwives could be ignorant and incompetent. Some man-midwives were equally injurious when delivering children, despite being trained under doctors and man-midwives who taught classes and used obstetrical machines or phantoms. Mistaking the Placenta for a Tumor Mr. David Evans, a surgeon and man-midwife, described a case in which he […]
Read More »Forceps Fostered the Rise of Man-Midwifery
Diane Morris | Thursday, February 19th, 2015 | Childbirth | No Comments
For most of human history midwives ruled the roost when it came to delivering children, as you may have read in my previous post on Regency midwives. Man-midwives or accoucheurs, as they were known in France, were called to a delivery only when there was a problem or special situation: for example, when a child […]
Read More »Midwives Behaving Badly
Diane Morris | Thursday, February 5th, 2015 | Childbirth, Medicine | No Comments
The Regency midwives Margaret Stephen and Martha Mears appear to have been hard-working, knowledgeable, and competent. (See my previous post on these famous midwives.) Margaret Stephen defined her craft as “the art of delivering women safely of their children, and preserving the children from injury” — an outcome equally desired by obstetricians today.1 Martha Mears believed pregnancy […]
Read More »A Life of Perpetual Pregnancy for Regency Women
Diane Morris | Thursday, January 8th, 2015 | Childbirth, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice | 4 Comments
Many women today can choose when to become pregnant, thanks to the availability of safe and reliable contraceptives.1 It wasn’t always so. During the Regency period women were often pregnant every few years, beginning within the first or second year of marriage and continuing until they were in their 30s or 40s. An Average of Eight Children […]
Read More »A Tedious Regency Labor: Hog’s Lard and Laudanum
Diane Morris | Thursday, September 25th, 2014 | Childbirth, Medicine | No Comments
Thanks to Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, the character of Anne de Bourgh is forever fixed as “sickly and cross”1—which begs a question: Why is she so disagreeable? In my Regency novel, Rosings Park, Anne has two reasons to be cross as crabs. First, she has returned home from a trip to Tunbridge […]
Read More »