Known for his medical expertise as well as his compassion and concern, Channing was highly regarded by colleagues and patients alike.".

Childbirth is a quintessential family event that simultaneously holds great promise and runs the risk of danger. By the late nineteenth century, the birthing room had become a place where the goals of the new scientific professional could be demonstrated, but where traditional female knowledge was in conflict with the new ways. Here the choice of attendants and their practices defined gender, ethnicity, class, and the role of the professional. Using the methodology of social science theory, particularly quantitative statistical analysis and historical demography, Charlotte Borst examines the effect of gender, culture, and class on the transition to physician-attended childbirth. Earlier studies have focused on physician opposition to midwifery, devoting little attention to the training for and actual practice of midwifery. As a result, until now we knew little about the actual conditions of the midwife's education and practice. Catching Babies is the first study to examine the move to physician-attended birth within the context of a particular community. It focuses on four representative counties in Wisconsin to study both midwives and physicians within the context of their community. Borst finds that midwives were not pushed out of practice by elitist or misogynist obstetricians. Instead, their traditional, artisanal skills ceased to be valued by a society that had come to embrace the model of disinterested, professional science. The community that had previously hired midwives turned to physicians who shared ethnic and cultural values with the very midwives they replaced.

The author, a nurse-midwife and epidemiologist, brings together the myriad strands of history, culture, science, economics, and policy that have resulted in the current condition of maternity care in the US. While acknowledging the role and importance of medical obstetrics, she argues that the most sophisticated medical treatment does not reflect an understanding of childbearing as both a physiologic process and an important human experience and transition. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Surveys important issues in the history of medicine Although there is substantial literature on childbirth, it typically lacks the full medical, historical, and social context that these volumes provide. This series fills the gap in many institutions' libraries by bringing together key articles on the expectant mother, the attendants of her delivery, and the health of the newborn infant. The articles are from British and American publications that focus upon childbirth practices over the past 300 years and are selected from both primary and secondary sources. Some are classic works in medical literature; others are from historical, sociological, anthropological and feminist literature that present a wider range of scholarly perspectives on childbirth issues. Charts the progress of childbirth, midwifery, and obstetrics The series provides readers with key primary sources that illuminate the history of childbirth, midwifery and obstetrics. For example, general historical texts note that childbed (puerperal) fever claimed hundreds of thousands of maternal lives, and provoked much fear in Britain and America. The articles in this series, in addition to historical facts, also provide discussion of the causes and consequences of particular fever cases taken from the medical literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, and reveal what a challenge this disorder was to the medical profession. Includes more primary sources than other collections The articles serve as a resource for students and teachers in various fields including history, women's studies, human biology, sociology and anthropology. They also meet the educational needs of pre-medical and nursing students and aid pre-professional, allied health, and midwifery instructors in lesson preparations. The series examines a wide range of practical experience and offers a historical perspective on the most important developments in the history of British and American childbirth, midwifery, and obstetrics.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.