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Title: Birth Chairs, Midwives and Medicine by Amanda Carson Banks ISBN: 1-57806-172-5 Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: informative & interesting read!
Comment: This book provides a very interesting and informative detail of the history of birth culture in America as discovered through the study of birth chairs. In incluedes intriguing pictorial documentations of birth chairs and how they evolved into the modern maternity beds in use today.
Rating: 5
Summary: More Than Furniture
Comment: You hardly expect that a type of furniture would tell direct stories about medical history and the relationship between the sexes and between doctors and patients through the ages. However, in a surprising book _Birth Chairs, Midwives, and Medicine_ (University Press of Mississippi) by Amanda Carson Banks, we get quite a lesson in history and medical sociology. Some of the lessons don't reflect well on medical practitioners or on societal choice at all.
This well-illustrated book shows birth chairs and stools from many cultures and times. They were low, about ten or thirteen inches, and they had a more or less straight back. They had the simple job of supporting the woman in a squat, a position that allowed her to brace her feet against the ground and that allowed gravity to help. They had a very narrow seat, or a seat that had a horseshoe-shaped cut out, to allow the midwife access to the birth canal and delivery. They came in many styles, because they were generally made or ordered by the midwives that owned them.
Because of the rise of the profession of medicine, and because obstetrics was a source of professional endeavor and income, chairs changed. The seats became higher, allowing the doctor an easier view and more room for manipulation. The attitude seemed to be that midwives could put up with back strain, but doctors wouldn't; it didn't matter that the position of squatting was eliminated, so that the woman could do less to brace herself during contractions. The chairs also became more gadget-ridden, with adjustable backs, seats, arms, and stirrups. The doctor would probably adjust these to his convenience. The innovations of gadgets on what were formerly simple stools started to include chair backs that could descend to the horizontal, making the lithotomy position an option. Increasingly, birth chairs became more like operating tables, and the role of the woman centrally involved became less important than the duties of those conducting the delivery. Birth chairs came into fashion again with the rise of the women's rights movement, but doctors only grudgingly accepted them.
This is a lot of medical history for the lowly birth chair to bear, but Banks has written a thought-provoking summary of just how societies have regarded birth chairs and midwives, and how we got to the current era of continued medical intervention in labor and delivery. To her credit, she has written a history rather than a polemic, but the history cannot help but question whether abandoning birth chairs has been good for mothers or their babies.
Rating: 5
Summary: Worth reading for pleasure and for serious reference!
Comment: This book is worth reading if you want a fresh, incisive, and reliable take on the history of women and material culture. Banks reaches across time and diverse cultural experience and creates a compelling interpretation of birthing as a cultural process. She intelligently argues that the concrete environnment, and birth chairs in particular, could empower women in moments of dangerous transition, like childbirth.
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Title: Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English ISBN: 0912670134 Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY Pub. Date: December, 1973 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America by Dorothy C. Wertz, Richard W. Wertz ISBN: 0300040873 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Women Healers: Portraits of Herbalists, Physicians, and Midwives by Elisabeth Brooke ISBN: 0892815485 Publisher: Inner Traditions Intl Ltd Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Birth in Four Cultures : A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States by Brigitte Jordan, Robbie Davis-Floyd ISBN: 088133717X Publisher: Waveland Press Pub. Date: January, 1993 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Medicine Women: A Pictorial History of Women Healers by Elisabeth Brooke ISBN: 0835607518 Publisher: Quest Books Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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