Browse Items (18 total)
Sort by:
-
Contraception (Birth Control) Its Theory, History and Practice
In 1905, at age twenty-five, Marie Stopes became the youngest Doctor of Science in Britain while pursuing her first career as a paleobotanist. She was also a life-long women’s rights activist. Her unhappy and unconsummated first marriage led her to write about sexuality and birth control. She met Margaret Sanger in 1915 during Sanger’s self-exile in London and the two discussed birth control extensively. It became her passion. She opened the Mothers Clinic in London with her second husband in 1921 and over time opened clinics in major cities across Great Britain. -
Family Limitation: [For Private Circulation]
Margaret Sanger’s socialism and feminism were born of her own experience. She noted in My Fight for Birth Control that, “Very early in my childhood I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large families.” Sanger worked as a nurse in the New York City slums and began to challenge the federal laws that prohibited the distribution of birth control information. This copy of Family Limitation is one of one hundred thousand in the first edition. Sanger opened the first family-planning clinic in 1916. In 1952, she joined with other advocates for family planning and founded the International Planned Parenthood Federation. -
Sanitary Health Sponge
Sponges have been in use for contraceptive purposes for centuries. Modern forms of the contraceptive sponge were popularized in the west during the birth control movement of the early twentieth century. Both Sanger and Stopes recommended their use for effective birth control. The Sanitary Health Sponge sits inside a pouch of pink netting with a cord for easier removal. -
[Medical students and teacher at dissection]
Note the female medical student present. Women were refused admission to American and British medical schools until the mid-nineteenth century. American women seeking medical training were forced to go abroad to Europe. By mid-century, pressure from social reform movements led to the creation of schools and teaching hospitals specifically to educate women. Boston Medical College for Women, founded in 1848, was followed in 1850 by the Pennsylvania Medical College for Women. In 1870, the University of Michigan chartered the first American co-educational medical school, and others soon followed, but the debate over the merits of “mixed classes” continued. -
Geburtshilfliches Taschenphantom zur Darstellung des Beckenausgangs-Mechanismus der Kopflagen und der Operationen bei denselben nebst einer Besprechung der Eintheilung, Diagnose, Pathologie und Therapie der Kopflagen
Mueller’s book explicating the various positions of the fetus as it descends through the birth canal during delivery is accompanied by an interactive anatomical model of a female pelvis. It illustrates changes to the fetal head and the use of forceps. Forceps for delivery were first invented in the sixteenth century and new designs were developed over time. Anatomical models were often used for both students and practitioners to learn new methods. In this case, the interactive model allows the reader to train in procedures and positioning of forceps for delivery. -
Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. She immigrated with her family to the United States from England in 1831. Around 1844, she set her sights on becoming a physician, and endured years of rejections from medical schools until 1847 when a school in Geneva, New York, accepted her—in part as a joke. Blackwell, however, graduated first in her class. In 1853, she established a dispensary for the poor, the New York Infirmary for Women, which also became a training hospital for women. -
Madame Restell!: her secret life-history from her birth to her suicide: full details: showing how she became rich: who her victims were, and how she held them in her power: her tricks and devices: what she did and how she did: all about her: "the most terrible being ever born"
English immigrant Anna Trow Lohman, known as Madame Restell, became notorious and financially successful by performing abortions. New York had outlawed abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life, but abortion practitioners continued to work in the state. Restell was entrepreneurial. She sold patent medicines for birth control and abortion, provided housing for pregnant women, and facilitated adoptions. In 1847, her husband, the radical printer Charles M. Lohman, published a medical companion under the name A. M. Mauriceau. It went through at least nine editions. The book advertised Restell’s patent medicines, as well as condoms. Their business flourished, with branches opening in Philadelphia and Boston. In 1873, the Comstock Law to suppress the circulation of obscene materials was enacted, and in 1878 Restell was personally arrested by Anthony Comstock. Anna Restell committed suicide the morning she was to face charges in court. -
Discourses to Women on Medical Subjects
In 1852, Anna Longshore-Potts, was one of the first graduates of the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. She believed knowledge would lead to prevention of disease, and she dedicated herself to educating women on health and physiology. Between 1876 and 1885 she lectured throughout the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and Great Britain. She often contributed the proceeds from her well-attended lectures in England to local charities. In 1887 her Discourses to Women on Medical Subjects was published, the culmination of her work educating women about gynecological and reproductive health. -
Madame Restell’s Mansion on Fifth Avenue [stereoview]
English immigrant Anna Trow Lohman, known as Madame Restell, became notorious and financially successful by performing abortions. New York had outlawed abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life, but abortion practitioners continued to work in the state. Restell was entrepreneurial. She sold patent medicines for birth control and abortion, provided housing for pregnant women, and facilitated adoptions. In 1847, her husband, the radical printer Charles M. Lohman, published a medical companion under the name A. M. Mauriceau. It went through at least nine editions. The book advertised Restell’s patent medicines, as well as condoms. Their business flourished, with branches opening in Philadelphia and Boston, they and were able to purchase a mansion on Fifth Avenue. In 1873, the Comstock Law to suppress the circulation of obscene materials was enacted, and in 1878 Restell was personally arrested by Anthony Comstock. Anna Restell committed suicide the morning she was to face charges in court. -
An Introductory Lecture to a Course on Physiology, will be Delivered by Mary J. Scarlett, M.D.
Quaker Mary J. Scarlett graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1857 and became Professor of Anatomy at the College in 1862. She practiced amongst the poor and gave lectures on hygiene and health in rural communities. Because hospitals at this time were not open to women for purposes of instruction, the Woman’s Medical College opened the Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 1861. Scarlett served as resident physician at the hospital until 1871. -
Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands
Nurse and businesswoman Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1805 to a Scottish officer in the British Army and a free Jamaican woman. In Seacole’s autobiographical Wonderful Adventures, she relates her extensive travel and medical contributions, including her work as a nurse during the Crimean War. She had applied to participate in wartime initiatives, including joining a group of nurses organized by Florence Nightingale, but was rejected. Instead, she and a business partner gathered their own supplies, booked passage on a Dutch ship, and established quarters for sick officers between Balaclava and Sevastopol. -
Medical morals, illustrated with plates and extracts from medical works: designed to show the pernicious social and moral influence of the present system of medical practice, and the importance of establishing female medical colleges, and educating and employing female physicians for their own sex
During the Victorian Era, many considered childbirth and midwifery to be unseemly and male midwifery indecent. George Gregory shared these views, and he championed the establishment of female medical colleges so that men would not be needed in “this disagreeable branch of medicine.” In Medical Morals he includes images and quotations from the English translation of J. P. Maygrier’s Nouvelles démonstrations d’accouchemens to illuminate his point. Dr. Maygrier’s comprehensive and beautifully illustrated work on obstetrics portrays the changes in a pregnant woman’s body, documenting labor and delivery. In some of the images, he intended to show a discreet examination of a woman. In Gregory’s later engravings, after Maygrier’s images, the examination takes on a sinister character. -
The married woman's private medical companion: embracing the treatment of menstruation, or monthly turns, during their stoppage, irregularity, or entire suppression: pregnancy, and how it may be determined, with the treatment of its various diseases: discovery to prevent pregnancy, the great and important necessity where malformation or inability exists to give birth: to prevent miscarriage or abortion: when proper and necessary to effect miscarriage when attended with entire safety: causes and mode of cure of barrenness, or sterility
English immigrant Anna Trow Lohman, known as Madame Restell, became notorious and financially successful by performing abortions. New York had outlawed abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life, but abortion practitioners continued to work in the state. Restell was entrepreneurial. She sold patent medicines for birth control and abortion, provided housing for pregnant women, and facilitated adoptions. In 1847, her husband, the radical printer Charles M. Lohman, published a medical companion under the name A. M. Mauriceau. It went through at least nine editions. The book advertised Restell’s patent medicines, as well as condoms. Their business flourished, with branches opening in Philadelphia and Boston. In 1873, the Comstock Law to suppress the circulation of obscene materials was enacted, and in 1878 Restell was personally arrested by Anthony Comstock. Anna Restell committed suicide the morning she was to face charges in court. -
Memorial de l'art des accouchemens, ou, Principes fondés sur la pratique de l'Hospice de la maternité de Paris et sur celle des plus célèbres praticiens nationaux et étrangers : suivis, 1° des aphorismes de Mauriceau; 2° d'une série de 140 gravures représtant le mécanisme de toutes les espèces d'accouchemens : ouvrage placé, par décision ministérielle, au rang des livres classiques à l'usage des élèves de l'Ecole d'accouchemens de Paris...
French midwife Marie Boivin is considered one of the first great modern practitioners of obstetrics and gynecology. Boivin began her studies at a nunnery in Étampes and later worked under accomplished midwife Marie-Louise Lachapelle. She invented a new speculum and wrote numerous treatises, including Memorial de l’art des accouchemens, first published in 1812. This manual was published in many editions and translated into several European languages. Boivin also translated medical works from English and directed numerous hospitals throughout her career. -
Abrégé de l'art des accouchemens
A descendant of pioneering midwife Louise Bourgeois Boursier, Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray passed the tests to be admitted as a midwife of the city and faubourgs of Paris in 1740, after a three-year apprenticeship under Anne Bairsin. In 1759, King Louis XV chose her to travel throughout France to teach midwifery in an effort to decrease infant mortality. That same year, her De virorum organiz generationi inservientibus was published, a practical textbook intended to modernize and professionalize midwifery in France. This copy is signed by Du Coudray. -
Die königl. Preussische und Chur-Brandenb. Hof-Wehe-Mütter, das ist, Ein höchst nöthiger Unterricht von schweren und unrecht-stehenden Geburten in einem Gespräch vorgestellet: wie nemlich, durch göttlichen Beystand, eine wohlunterrichtete Wehe-Mutter mit Verstand und geschickter Hand dergleichen verhüten, oder wanns Noth ist, das Kind wenden könne; durch vieler Jahre Ubung selbst erfahren und wahr befunden: nun aber Gott zu Ehren und dem nechsten zu Nutz, auf gnädigst- und inständiges Verlangen durchläuchtigst- und vieler hohen Standes-Personen verbessert, mit einem Anhange heilsamer Arzney-Mittel, und mit denen dissfals erregten Controvers-Schriften vermehret
Her own false pregnancy led Silesian midwife Justina Siegemund to study female anatomy, teaching herself using Regnier de Graaf’s De virorum organis generationi inservientibus. For twelve years she served the poor women of her region, eventually taking on cases of upper-class women. Specializing in catastrophic deliveries, she was appointed Stadt Wehmutter (city midwife) of Liegnitz and named midwife to the Prussian royal family. She gained printing privileges from the Elector of Brandenburg to publish Hof-Wehe-Mütter (The Court Midwife). Her book was first published in Berlin in 1690, republished six times, and translated into Dutch. By the time of her death she had delivered over six thousand infants. -
Het begin en den ingang van alle menschen in de wereld, of, Aanmerkingen
Louise Bourgeois Boursier, midwife to the French court, attended over 2,000 deliveries, recording her methods and her observations. She helped to alleviate the pain, fear, and mortality of childbirth. Bourgeois wrote in French rather than Latin, enabling wider dissemination of her ideas. Her Observations diuerses was translated into Dutch, German, and English. This Dutch translation, with its delightful title page, was published almost one hundred years after the book’s first appearance in France. -
Observations diuerses, sur la sterilité, perte de fruict, foecondite, accouchements, et maladies des femmes, et enfants nouueaux naiz
On the engraved title page of Louise Bourgeois Boursier’s Observations diuerses, babies abound and thanks are given to God. But it is the skill and lessons contained in this, the first book on obstetrics written by a woman, which we acknowledge. Louise Bourgeois turned to midwifery to support her family while her surgeon husband served in the army. In 1598 she received certification and passed the entrance examination to the midwives’ guild, eventually becoming midwife to the French court and to Marie de Medici, delivering all six of the Queen’s infants. Bourgeois attended over 2,000 deliveries of ordinary people as well as the aristocracy.
Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info