The Battle Over the Birthing Chamber
Whilst men dominated academic writing on childbirth, the majority of births were still attended to by experienced but unqualified women (howdies) in the community. In remote areas medical men often worked with and promoted howdies, with doctors or surgeons being called in only when difficulties arose.
Within European cities however, women who could afford it increasingly turned to male midwives. With the increase in lying in wards, the poor also had similar opportunities to access medical care and this was the case in Scotland too. Competition between male midwives and 'howdies' grew in Scottish cities and major towns, spurred on by various texts written to discredit traditional female midwives and promote the male midwife as the ‘safest pair of hands’.
Interestingly though, as men tended to be called only when complications arose, many associated their presence as dangerous. This was particularly the case with outbreaks of puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever. This deadly and highly infectious disease was transmitted via contaminated instruments or unhygienic attendants and was known to spread quickly in hospital settings.
Most associate the physician Ignaz Semmelweiss with the identification of this disease in the 1840s. However, it has recently been discovered that a Scottish midwifery lecturer in Aberdeen discovered the cause of infection nearly fifty years before. Alexander Gordon (1752-1799) published his research into puerperal fever in 1795, stating:
It is a disagreeable declaration for me to mention that I myself was the means of carrying the disease to a great number of women.
Following two serious outbreaks of the disease in Aberdeen, Gordon traced cases back to himself and some of the busier female midwives in the city. He carefully gathered statistics showing that puerperal fever was less common in the surrounding countryside where howdies had more time between patients and did not use instruments. He recommended that clothes, instruments and hands should be washed and treated after visiting an infected patient. However, the medical community in Aberdeen were openly hostile to Gordon’s ideas and it was nearly 100 years before these were revisited as a result of the emerging germ theory of disease.
