Get me out : a history of childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the sperm bank / Randi Hutter Epstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Epstein, Randi Hutter.

Contributor:

Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Childbirth--History.

Childbirth.

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 302 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Norton, [2010]

Summary:

Making and having babies--what it takes to get pregnant, stay pregnant, and deliver--has mystified women and men for the whole of human history. Over the last one hundred years, depending on the latest prevailing advice, women have taken morphine, practiced Lamaze, relied on ultrasound images, sampled fertility drugs, and shopped at sperm banks. Here, the insatiably curious Randi Hutter Epstein journeys through history, fads, and fables, and to the fringe of science, where audacious researchers have gone to extreme measures to get healthy babies out of mothers. The result is an entertaining and enlightening celebration of human life.--From publisher description.

Contents:

Eve's doing : birth from antiquity through the Middle Ages

Men with tools : forceps use from 1600s to 1800s

Slave women's contribution to gynecology

Dying to give birth : maternal mortality into the twentieth century

Leaving home : New York's lying-in and the growth of maternity wards

Birth is but a sleep and forgetting

What was she thinking? : Freud meets fertility

It's only natural

Toxic advice and a deadly drug : DES

From kitchen-table surgery to the art of the C-section

Freebirthers

Womb with a view

Sperm shopping

The big chill

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-302).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780393064582

0393064581

OCLC:

317919634

Publisher Number:

99936812022