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#11
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
ChocolateChip_Wookie wrote: Presumably that was Princess Vicky, since none of Victoria's other daughters had, so far as I recall, 8 children. (I think Alice had 6 or 7, Helena and Beatrice about 4, and Louise none at all.) Ooops, clumsy phraseology....the Great Grandmother with 8 children was my own and no relation to Queen Victoria or her daughters. I have a copy of my maternal ancestors will, not the will made by Victorias' daughter. I know the will existed for Victoria's daughter but cannot recall which one, it's one of those half remembered facts you pick up idly watching the History Channel. I would be happy to be corrected if anyone has the correct citation - I think it was the daughter she sent the chloroform to. I WAS a little confused there. Thanks for clearing it up. It still would have been Vicky, I think. I know Victoria she sent along some chloroform for the first birth (along with her own midwife and her own doctor). And Vicky did, in fact, almost die during her first delivery, but not from infection. The baby was breach, and since the first doctors to arrive were too delicate to actually do an internal exam, she labored ineffectually for quite some time before anyone discovered the problem. (At which point she was given the chloroform (not used until then because the German doctor wasn't famliar with it and the English doctor knew that if Vicky died from ANY cause, the blame would fall firmly on HIS shoulders), and the baby was turned and pulled out manually. (Notices had already been sent along to the newspapers reporting the death of both mom and baby since everyone was sure she WOULDN'T survive.) I've read a lot about this particular royal family. Don't remember seeing anything specific about a will but again, I'm sure it would not have been an unusual thing, but not because the risk of dying was that extremely high. Naomi Wookie |
#12
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
Ericka Kammerer wrote:
ChocolateChip_Wookie wrote: In conclusion therefore, I would be inclined to believe the statistics - horrifying as they are to our modern eyes. Women did frequently die of puerpural fever, it was very common, so common in fact that women routinely organised their affairs before going into labour. Just finally, in the years 1994 - 1996 there were 16 recorded deaths from puerpural fever in the UK [Report Department of Health, 'Why women die']. Go ask your midwife if she knows what it is and what the signs are....I doubt she does. Arrogance breeds ignorance. Just because we have antibiotics, doesnt mean that puerpural fever has been irradicated...it hasnt. A 15 or 35 percent *per pregnancy* mortality rate (depending on how you parse things) might be an accurate statistic for a particular hospital during an epidemic or something, but I can't find *anything* *anywhere* that lists even a total maternal mortality rate that high for the mid-nineteenth century. Sweden was on the low end with something like a rate of 5 or 6 per thousand. The *highest* rate I can find anywhere is less than 10 percent, and that was in a particular clinic with all the high risk practices for puerperal fever. There's just no way that the national maternal mortality rate due to puerperal fever could be even 15 percent/pregnancy, much less 35 percent. Reports in the US show a much lower rate of maternal mortality. While the trend was moving toward the hospitalization of birth, by the mid-nineteenth century, most births were still at home in the US, with much lower maternal mortality rates. If there truly were a national 15 percent mortality rate, with an average of somewhere around 6 deliveries per woman at that time in the US, that would mean that an average woman would have had more than a 60 percent chance of dying of childbirth at some time in her life. That's just clearly ludicrous. Also, why on earth would you assume that a midwife wouldn't know the signs and symptoms of puerperal fever? That boggles the mind. Best wishes, Ericka I doubt there are any 'combined' statistics for a country as a whole. Until recently (withing 100 years) there was no central register of birth/death/marriage...there were parish records, but these were often innacurate, destroyed or not kept up to date. With regard to America, the following website might be of interest... http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/his...childbirth.cfm Wookie |
#13
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
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#14
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
At which point she was given the
chloroform (not used until then because the German doctor wasn't famliar with it and the English doctor knew that if Vicky died from ANY cause, the blame would fall firmly on HIS shoulders), and the baby was turned and pulled out manually. Victoria sent the chloroform to her as a 'new' innovation (that, I do remember). Until then, the use of chloroform for labour was not considered because it was thought that the 'lusty cries of the mother' were a good thing. Pain in childbirth was considered God's punishment for Eve's sin of eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Women were merely advised to "arm themselves with patience" and prayer and to try, during labor, to restrain "those dreadful groans and cries which do so much discourage their friends and relations that are near them." In general, doctors believed that the pain wasn't that bad, didnt warrant the use of chloroform and in any case it's natures' way and one shouldnt interfere with God's intentions. Bizarre I know. We all know it hurts like bu****ry and no doubt so did the midwives who had all had children of their own and understood, they were overuled by their more 'educated' male counterparts. By the way...I dont have a downer on men honest (having re-read some of my posts, it might seem like that), I do have a downer on the medical profession, particularly the earlier medical and male dominated profession who seemed to presume that since they were men, they knew what they were talking about, whereas uneducated wisewomen are little better than witchdoctors. Even today, I've met a number of male gynies who seem to believe that this is all a *mdeical* situation that requires medical intervention and that I as a woman couldnt possibly understand their lofty medical arguments. Argh. Wookie |
#15
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
ChocolateChip_Wookie wrote: At which point she was given the chloroform (not used until then because the German doctor wasn't famliar with it and the English doctor knew that if Vicky died from ANY cause, the blame would fall firmly on HIS shoulders), and the baby was turned and pulled out manually. Victoria sent the chloroform to her as a 'new' innovation (that, I do remember). Until then, the use of chloroform for labour was not considered because it was thought that the 'lusty cries of the mother' were a good thing. Pain in childbirth was considered God's punishment for Eve's sin of eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. It was newish by the time Vicky's first child was born, but not brand new. Victoria herself had had Chloroform for the birth of her 8th child, Leopold, about 6 years before. (And then again for her last child, Beatrice.) Even before that time it had been used occassionally for complicated deliveries, but once Victoria used it (and liked it), it suddenly became fashionable in England, and other upperclass mothers began requesting it. It took longer for it to be commonly used elsewhere. (It also required a doctor skilled in its use to administer it, and since most women were, of course, tended by midwives, it simply wasn't available to the great majority of mothers. Pain in child-birth (and in surgery) was also considered to be useful. When ether first became available for surgery, some doctors didn't want to use it, because they believed that the shock of the pain (and adrenaline release) accompanying surgery actually enhanced recovery. And for childbirth ... well ... it WAS fairly dangerous, since the techniques for administering the stuff (both ether and chloroform) were pretty primative at that point. And since women didn't tend to die from pain in childbirth, most doctors were hesitant to give it for practical medical reasons, except in the most complicated situations. (i.e., the need to relax the mother for version). But, of course, mothers began to insist, so the doctors gave in. Naomi |
#16
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
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#18
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
"John Mackintosh, writing in the 1820s, commented that "there is not
a corner in Britain where this formidable disease has not made many mourners",11, but observed that a number of particular epidemics had become famous as a result of having been recorded and then repeatedly described in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century treatises on the subject. Alongside the Paris epidemic of 1745/6 and the London epidemic of 1760/1, he cited the 1768 and 1770 epidemics in London and other parts of England; the prolonged epidemic in Aberdeen from 1789-92 recorded by Alexander Gordon;12, and the epidemics in Leeds and Sunderland described respectively by William Hey and John Armstrong.13, Case fatality rates had varied enormously. For example, it was reported that, during the epidemic at the Westminster Lying-in Hospital in 1770, out of sixty-three women delivered, nineteen contracted the disease and thirteen of these died. In the Aberdeen epidemic, out of seventy-seven patients with the disease, twenty-eight died. However, Mackintosh also observed that, during an epidemic in the Lying-in Ward of the Edinburgh Infirmary "many years ago", all who contracted the disease died.14, The wide variations in the reports of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors make it impossible for a modern researcher to reconstruct accurately the incidence, mortality or case fatality rates for this disease.15," This is from an article my sister sent me, the full text of which can be found at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...?artid=1088248 . It doesn't directly answer the question, of course, but makes it seem likely that the author was actually quoting the account of such an epidemic, and accidentally generalized it to the state of affairs *in general* in the US in 1857. If the author is who I think she is, I'm very surprised she made such a mistake, and I rather hope it's due to some other secondary source having gotten it wrong, or else due to an editing error as I suggested before. --Helen |
#19
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
ChocolateChip_Wookie wrote:
I doubt there are any 'combined' statistics for a country as a whole. Until recently (withing 100 years) there was no central register of birth/death/marriage...there were parish records, but these were often innacurate, destroyed or not kept up to date. There are quite a few studies looking at maternal mortality in the US in that time frame. There may not have been a national registry, but there are quite a few local records, whether from clinics or doctors or midwives or what have you that scholars have studies. Put them together and you get a fairly representative idea of what was going on at the time. It is well known to be the case that the overwhelming majority of births were not in hospitals at that time, and that hospital births posed the greatest risk of puerperal fever. With regard to America, the following website might be of interest... http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/his...childbirth.cfm And that website also does not show maternal mortality rates anywhere near as high as the one in the OP. Best wishes, Ericka |
#20
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Questionable stats? (19th century stuff --Sorta OT)
I doubt there are any 'combined' statistics for a country as a whole.
Until recently (withing 100 years) there was no central register of birth/death/marriage...there were parish records, but these were often innacurate, destroyed or not kept up to date. In the UK, the central register began in 1838, records were made at local registry offices, then compiled centrally and bound into books for each quarter of the year ordered alphabetically. At some point someone began typing all these up, last time I went to the central record office in London, the earliest ones were typed, but the late 19th century was still handwritten on it's old paper, I presume that duplicate copies exist, otherwise there would be no way those originals would be available for all to handle! From about 1984, the records were then put together annually, but that's too much for one book, so the year ends up being split alphabetically, there is also a much longer delay in getting the book together, so if you need copies of records less than 18mths old, you have to obtain them from the local office. Cause of death should be recorded on death certificates, so in theory it would be possible to get a reasonably accurate count for any given year, but it would be a huge amount of work, so likely other methods are going to be used to estimate it. Cheers Anne |
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