I just finished skimming through a 'nurses guide to obsetrics' from 1903

GBCK

that I found cleaning out the library.

I'm glad I was not getting medical care (or starting my period for the first time) in 1903.  That is all.

DG1

oh come on. YOu have to share more than that.  In fact, can you send it to me? I would love to see it!

DG1

wait. I think I found teh 1915 edition online

http://books.google.com/books?id=XepsAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=1903+nurse%27s+guide+to+obstetrics&source=bl&ots=0nmQbASBZi&sig=yYidn-w_Es94Br2lw9nk0fE72cU&hl=en&ei=UL2zS_HTJMb_lgfgnvW8BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I LOVE the internet!

GBCK

I think it would finish falling apart in sending--it's more-or-less in pieces now.
I was typing quotes, give me a few to get some nice ones typed up :-)

GBCK

re: puberty and periods:

"In another class of cases, which unfortuantely, constitutes a very large proportion of all, the symptoms accompanying the flow are far more severe.  The sensation of weight and congestion in the pelvis may give way to pain of a most excrucating characer, the backache may become almost unbearable, and with the intense headache may be assocated nausea or even vomiting of a distressing type. 

(please to note, I'm on board until they start the next paragraph)

"Women who suffer to this extent are usually pale, thin, and anaemic, although they may be stouta nd plethoric.  They common lead 'hot house' lives of indolence and luxyar, or else they go tothe opposite xtreme and endurepoverty and great privation.  The "hot house" type, which is the one most likeyl to come under the ovservation of the nurse, is made up largely of women whose early life has been dvoid of properly regulated outdoor exercise and whose later existence has been devoted to monotomous in-door pursuits, conducive to morbid introspection, or else of those whose only interste has been in the excitement of social plesures with their accompanying late hours and exhilirating dinners and suppers""

Next page talking about the onset of pubert...

"until menstration  is fully established and occurs at regular interfals, free from pain or special discomfort, the girl is to be treated much as a convasescent patient.  Attendance at school is to be stopped, and if any studying at all is undetaken, it should beonly of simple subjects, easily mastered and posessing special interest.....
All excitement, late hours, and theatre-going must be given up.
Whenever the flow appears, the first day is to be spent in bed, no matter how well the patient may feel and she is to remain in bed until all pain or other discomfort is gone, even if it lasts throughout the entire period."

baconsmom

<copying that last paragraph and not telling my husband where I found it, so he shuts his damn trap about me being in bed with cramps and tsunami-flow>

GBCK

and ypu, the one you found = more or less the same.
so I'll quit typing and just find links to the amusing pages ;-P

P 141 = how to give choroform

p 229, how to place a kelly pad to drain off 'slop' (word my book used)

p 96...creepy picture.  Only because, HI, let's insert the picture of an adult man's onto the illustration of the baby becaues this is the 'proper' way to draw it

zsazsa-stl

I have a delightful home remedies book from 1915.  You wouldn't believe how many things can be cured with salt pork up the bum.

GBCK

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/special-topic-wedding-boards_wedding-woes_just-finished-skimming-through-nurses-guide-obsetrics-1903?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Special%20Topic%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:47Discussion:6a656d70-0861-45b8-a627-72cc71265570Post:a536bd67-ab7d-4813-8574-442715030452">Re: I just finished skimming through a 'nurses guide to obsetrics' from 1903</a>:
[QUOTE]I have a delightful home remedies book from 1915.  You wouldn't believe how many things can be cured with salt pork up the bum.
Posted by zsazsa-stl[/QUOTE]

That's what I forgot...the bit about 'soap suds enema' to keep you from pooping on the table.  Or ever I think, since after, you get to have laxatives...

DG1

I had skipped to "kitchen table utilized for operating table" (p. 221)

Unfortunately, the next several pages covered horrific events of forceps delivery, including the occasional need to decapitate a (usually) dead baby who is stuck in the pelvis.  (starts with "embryotomy" on p. 237, about halfway down)

Also interesting, p.244:
When the embryo is expelled before the end of the third month of gestation, the word "abortion" is, technically, the correct term to employ; while from the end of the third month up to the earliest date at which the child can, by any possibility, live (about six and a half months) the term "miscarriage" is used.
...
While, as has been said, the expulsion of the uterine contents during the first three months of gestation is technically termed "abortion," this word is so intimately associated in the public mind with some form of criminal procedure that thenurse should never use the word under any circumstances but group all such accidents occuring before the period of viability under the general term "miscarriage."

Dude. I *really* want a copy of this book. I wonder if I could get it from alibris or something.

Heffalump

That baby on p. 96 is super creepy.

This reminds me of that book that just came out about the history of childbirth.  They had a theory similar to the one about cramps:  "peasant-type" women were thought to be capable of giving birth on their own, but delicate, sheltered, indoorsy city-dwelling types were supposedly too fragile to deliver without drugs and other interventions. 

MinM

::sits next to bacon's mama::

I want to lay in bed all day and also be given drugs. I'm too fragile, really. I'm just a tiny little woman.