On the Mortality of Childbed and Maternity Hospitals
Creator
Date
1870
Identifier
Truby King Collection WQ 27 DW55
Type
Publisher
Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black
Abstract
‘The normal woman is never safer, healthier, happier, or more uplifted than during pregnancy’ – so said Truby King in the early 1900s. He believed that the success of the nation and the ‘destiny of the race’ lay firmly at the feet of the prospective mother. He advised pregnant women to get plenty of fresh air, to walk every day, and to eat a nutritious diet in order to produce healthy, viable children who could then defend and further the ideals of the British Empire. James Matthews Duncan (1826-90), a Scottish doctor and obstetrician, outlines in his On the Mortality of Childbed and Maternity Hospitals the difficulties and perils of successfully giving birth to a healthy baby.
Files
Citation
J. Matthews Duncan, “On the Mortality of Childbed and Maternity Hospitals,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed October 5, 2024, https://ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/9450.