http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25351-2645281,00.htmlCradle or grave
Much of birthing women’s misery can be traced to “cephalo-pelvic disproportion”. Bipedalism severely constrains our hip size – and big brains mean that even though babies are born too early in their development for anyone’s comfort, they are still likely to get stuck in the birth canal. Rather aptly known as Eve’s curse, the brain–pelvis stand-off is an evolutionary compromise that leaves little margin for error. This stand-off accounts for the fact that most women experience far more pain during childbirth than their primate cousins; for an African proverb stating that pregnant women have one foot in the grave; and for the fact that the skill of an attendant can easily make the difference between life and death. Up to the 1930s or so, it is estimated that about 1 per cent of birthing women died (and far more of their babies).
Historically, women with cramped pelvises were likely to expire into the oblivion of that 1 per cent. But one case stands out for creating a notable swerve in British royal history. In 1817, the popular and vivacious Princess Charlotte, King George IV’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, suffered from a now textbook case of cephalopelvic disproportion; two weeks overdue and weighing 9 lbs, her baby was far too big for her pelvis, and after fifty hours of active labour, he was delivered stillborn. Charlotte herself expired five hours later from internal bleeding. Since she was King George’s only legitimate child, his throne passed to his brother, and then to his niece, who became Queen Victoria. This is an oft-told tale in obstetrics – and one in which history on a grand scale was altered by the too-narrow straits of one woman’s pelvis.
The story doesn’t just end there. By the time of Charlotte’s delivery, midwives had, among the moneyed class, given way to “barber-surgeons” – an initially disastrous shift insofar as many book-learned young men were unleashed on the female birthing population with no prior hands-on training. Charlotte’s attending physician, Sir Richard Croft, did, however, have plenty of experience and had even written a textbook on the subject. Nonetheless, he was publicly vilified for what was perceived as poor decision-making: for, in effect, failing to use the instrument of his trade, forceps, on his royal patient. The fact was that forceps could be alarmingly destructive and so had momentarily fallen out of favour. Forceps, however, could also save lives if wielded by a competent hand – and this was a case in which they very well might have saved three lives. Unable to bear the public’s opprobrium, Sir Richard committed suicide.
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Religious beliefs, too, have obviously had a significant role in birth – in persecuting midwives as witches, in adjudicating who was most worth saving (mother or baby), and in interpretations of pain. In 1853, Queen Victoria notably defied clerical wisdom by inhaling chloroform during her eighth accouchement. The Lancet had firmly deplored such unnatural tinkering with “natural” labour but, as Cassidy explains, it was not the fact that it was a tremendously inexact science that bothered the public. Rather, the problem was that taking away pain appeared to tamper with divine decree (ie, Eve’s curse). It followed that, when Queen Victoria, the revered temporal head of the Anglican Church, inhaled chloroform, this seemingly inconsequential private act unleashed a paradigm shift in assumptions and practices on both sides of the Atlantic; the wealthy forthwith embraced chloroform à la reine. Soon enough, in another telling paradigm shift, “refined” women were seen as being too delicate to do anything but be knocked senseless during birth.
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Brownback doesn't know shit
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