Death before Birth Fetal Health and Mortality in Historical Perspective

by Woods, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780199542758
• ISBN10: 0199542759
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Considering its importance, the history of fetal health and mortality remains a neglected area. Medical historians have tended to focus on maternal mortality and professional conflicts between midwives rather than on the unborn, while among the social scientists demographers and epidemiologists have until recently devoted most of their attention to infants and children. Death before Birthredresses this imbalance, redirecting attention to the fetus. A study of fetal health from the seventeenth century to the present day, it is the first book to offer an historical perspective on the subject and to combine both medical history and epidemiological and demographic research, using long-term and comparative perspectives, including a strong international comparative element, across both Europe and North America. The book not only provides an account of how fetal health and the risks facing the unborn (miscarriages, abortions, stillbirths etc) have changed, it also offers an interpretation of the causes, one that focuses on the role of obstetrics and the epidemiology of maternal infections. Along the way, it pays detailed attention to a host of related themes, such as varying cultural practices in the recognition of stillbirths; the age pattern of mortality risk between conception and live birth; comparative trends in late-fetal mortality and their causes; fetal mortality and obstetric care during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries; and the contrasting approaches of the pathologists and "social epidemiologists" to the causes of fetal death. The book concludes with a study of the "fetus as patient," focusing on issues surrounding the legalization of abortion in many Western countries and the public health challenges of persistently high mortality in less developed countries.

Author Biography

Robert Woods is John Rankin Professor of Geography at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of The Demography of Victorian England and Wales (2000) and Children Remembered: Responses to Untimely Death in the Past (2006). He is also an editor of the journal Population Studies and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xi
List of Tables	p. xiv
List of Abbreviations	p. xvi
Introduction to fetal health and mortality	p. 1
Definitions, measurement, influences	p. 14
Definitions	p. 14
Measurement	p. 27
Influences	p. 30
The prospects for survival from conception to childhood	p. 35
Biometric analysis of infant mortality	p. 35
Fetal survival	p. 41
Concepdon-to-first-birthday survival: a model	p. 46
Historical implications	p. 52
Comparative historical trends and variations	p. 56
Advanced states	p. 56
Late states	p. 69
Les ondoyés décédés and lesfaux mort-nés	p. 77
Speculations on the causes of decline and convergence since 1930	p. 82
Fetal mortality in developing countries	p. 85
Historical estimation	p. 89
Midwifery and fetal death	p. 102
Midwifery before 1750	p. 104
Midwifery practice according to Dr William Smellie	p. 120
Midwifery after Smellie	p. 133
Specialist studies of fetal development and abortion: WhiteheadÆs surveys and PriestleyÆs Pathology	p. 142
Fetal pathology and social obstetrics	p. 152
Diseases of the fetus and infant	p. o152
Fetal necropsy	p. 160
Social obstetrics	p. 165
The classification of causes	p. 178
Arguments from medical history and demography	p. 189
How should fetal mortality be explained?	p. 190
Arguments from medical history	p. 196
Arguments from demography, etc.	p. 209
Smallpox in pregnancy	p. 213
Maternal syphilis	p. 232
Combined causes	p. 235
Induced abortion and the fetus as patient: a continuing paradox	p. 238
Bibliography	p. 257
Index	p. 285
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