History
| “ | The primal curse, "I will greatly multiply the sorrow of your conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children," was to be finally abrogated. The bearing of a child was henceforth to be merely a time of twilight and of sleep. | ” |
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—Twilight Sleep: the Dämmerschlaf of the Germans, The Canadian Medical Association Journal |
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Developed in Freiburg, Germany, twilight sleep replaced chloroform, the previous treatment for childbirth pains popular during the 1800s. Developed by Carl Gauss, who began research on the treatment in 1903, it was also sometimes known as the "Freiburg method". However, Gauss was not the first to suggest the use of the combination of morphine and scopolamine as a surgical anesthesia; in 1899, a Dr. Schneiderlin "recommended the use of scopolamine, combined with morphia, for the production of surgical anaesthesia".
Though introduced to the rest of the medical community in 1907, as of 1915, The Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that "the method really still in a state of development", noting of many substitutions that different doctors had used in the place of morphine or scopolamine.
In 1915, the New York Times published an article on twilight sleep and the work of Hanna Rion, or Mrs. Frank Ver Beck, who had recently written a book entitled The Truth About Twilight Sleep. In that article, Rion said that the consensus of 69 medical reports she had looked at said that "scopolamin-morphin is without danger to the child."
This consensus would eventually change as the negative side effects of twilight sleep came to light.
Read more about this topic: Twilight Sleep
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)