Slave-midwives avoided methods and drugs that were common for the male physicians during this time. While doctors were using cupping, leeching, urination and even vomiting to assist in childbirth, midwives used more traditional methods to maintain control during the birthing process. Doctors also relied on episiotomies to assist in childbirth, but since these often resulted in infection and sometimes even death, midwives avoided resorting to this procedure. They instead would apply oil to the vulva, strengthening the muscles for the delivery process. To induce labor, midwives would create tonics and even burn roots, directing the smoke into the vulva. A slave-midwife from Kentucky, Easter Sudie Campbell, describes a tonic she would mix to cure the swelling of the glands, “I cans cure scrofula wid burdock root and one half spoon of citrate of potash. Jes make a tea of burdock root en add the citrate of potash to hit” (Tunc, 2010).
The slave midwife became a highly important member of the slave community within the Southern Plantation, the French and English Caribbean and South America. She was
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She was the root doctor among the slave quarters; maintaining the health of other slaves on the plantation. Pregnancy and childbirth folklore, beliefs and rituals that originated in Africa, were practiced and passed on from generation to generation. Many midwives regardless whether they lived in the U.S. South, West Indies, South America or the Gullah Sea Islands, shared similar beliefs regarding the protection of pregnancy and childbirth. Common beliefs are documented and still practiced among midwives today regarding the Caul (the amniotic membrane enclosing a fetus) or "veil", umbilical cords, the burying or burning of the placenta, easing the pain of labor, and what the pregnant woman is exposed to during pregnancy that could jinx her
This novel, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, is based on Ballard’s diary starting in 1785 and ending with her death in 1812. Ulrich takes us step by step through Martha Ballard’s life as a Colonial Midwife. She reveals to us all the marvelous acts that midwives performed for their families and communities. “Midwives and nurses mediated the mysteries of birth, procreation, illness and death. They touched the untouchable, handled excrement and vomit as well as milk, swaddled the dead as well as the newborn” (Ulrich, 1990, pg.47). The novel also reveals that based on the views of societal power, gender roles in the medical environment and personal values, revealed in the diary, women were subordinate to men during this historical time period. Martha Ballard lived and thrived in this inferior atmosphere.
It was the women’s who was charged with keeping the home in order. The destiny of a black women during the slave era were to absurdly be pushed to give offspring by a random slave men so he can ultimately be sold or be used in the plantation. Her societal purpose was to cook, sew, wash, clean the house, breastfeed her kids as well as breastfeeding her master’s offspring. Customarily black women were given domestic or demeaning work to show their inferiority within society if we look at the pyramid of different classes of people in that era. Black women represented a mother figure to attend to the needs of black men and children in her community. She was not compensated for the work she had performed. She was very much indispensable to the survival of her community. The black women experience to share the sweat and tears of her race in the antebellum era and the revolutionary period played a big role in her survival, and her humanity. Hers and others survival through that difficult antebellum time has led them to their contribution of the revolutionary period, and ultimately gave birth to freedom from
Contrary to having doctors deliver babies today, midwives were called upon to deliver babies during the eighteenth century. There were many more midwives than there were doctors during that time. In addition, Martha served as a midwife, nurse, physician, mortician, pharmacist, and attentive wife simultaneously (40). Aside from being able to deliver babies, midwives were also highly experienced in medical care—they tended to wounds, diagnosed illnesses, and made medicine. Midwives were more accessible and abundant when compared to doctors—they did not require any formal training or education. When the medical field was underdeveloped, the midwives were the leading resource when it was related to medical conflicts.
Several barriers are present that dissuade many Amish women from receiving modern prenatal care due to their cultural and spiritual beliefs. Cost can be a major factor when it comes to modern prenatal treatment, as many Amish families could not afford it. Transportation is also a factor when it comes to prenatal treatment. The overwhelming majority of Amish transport is the horse-drawn carriage. Perhaps the largest barrier present is the cultural system of the Amish itself. The Amish are humble and modest, and as such, are loathe revealing their nudity, so much so that many women would not permit physical asse...
Slaves during the mid-1800s were considered chattel and did not have rights to anything that opposed their masters’ wishes. “Although the slaves’ rights could never be completely denied, it had to be minimized for the institution of slavery to function” (McLaurin, 118). Female slaves, however, usually played a different role for the family they were serving than male slaves. Housework and helping with the children were often duties that slaveholders designated to their female slaves. Condoned by society, many male slaveholders used their female property as concubines, although the act was usually kept covert. These issues, aided by their lack of power, made the lives of female slaves
Angus McLaren, author of “Illegal Operations: Women, Doctors, and Abortion” demonstrates the life of an abortionist in the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. McLaren explains a series of affairs in detail with many different abortionists. Since abortion was illegal at the time, many women consulted midwives, or took the procedure of abortion among themselves, this at times resulted in their death.
Servitude has been present in America since 1619 and has affected the lives of countless Americans. Slavery was the underlying cause to the American Civil War, which led to tremendous consequences within the United States. Slaves were being sold to work on cotton farms in the southern parts of the United States where cash crops generated money. Many of these slaves tried to escape from slavery, and were unsuccessful. However, Harriet Tubman was one of the few people to individually accomplish freedom and escape the horrors of enslavement. She is a remarkable individual who accomplished incredible tasks through her own bravery, intelligence, and strength. She is acknowledged as one of the most influential and passionate women in American history. Motivated by her own unjust past, Harriet Tubman became an active abolitionist, a respected conductor in the abolitionist movement known as the Underground Railroad, and served as a nurse and a spy in the American Civil war.
When one thinks of slavery, they may consider chains holding captives, beaten into submission, and forced to work indefinitely for no money. The other thing that often comes to mind? Stereotypical African slaves, shipped to America in the seventeenth century. The kind of slavery that was outlawed by the 18th amendment, nearly a century and a half ago. As author of Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People, Kevin Bales, states, the stereotypes surrounding slavery often confuse and blur the reality of slavery. Although slavery surely consists of physical chains, beatings, and forced labor, there is much more depth to the issue, making slavery much more complex today than ever before.
...s that they weren’t just slaves; they were women, sisters, wives, and daughters, just like the white women (DOC C). The women of this time period reached out to expand ideals by showing men that women were going to be involved in political affairs, and they had a right to do so.
Born on the Edward Brodas Plantation, in Dorchester Country to Benjamin Ross and Harriet Green around 1820, Harriet Tubman was one of the most advancing forces with the Underground Railroad. Originally named Araminta ‘Minty’ Ross, she changed her last name when she married and her first in honor of her mother (Women in History). As a young child, she was put to work as a house servant, taking care of menial chores like cleaning and taking care of babies. She once said, “I was so little that I had to sit on the floor and have the baby put in my lap, and that baby was always in my lap except when it was sleep or when its mother was feeding it (Driggs).” She did not like being forced to babysit every day and nonstop for hours at a time. Many times, she was “loaned” out to other slave owners to do similar work in their houses (PBS). She was rebellious even at a young age; she stole a lump of sugar at the age of seven and proceeded to run away to avoid being punished. She was gone for five days before she su...
African-American music is a vibrant art form that describes the difficult lives of African American people. This can be proven by examining slave music, which shows its listeners how the slaves felt when they were working, and gives us insight into the problems of slavery; the blues, which expresses the significant connection with American history, discusses what the American spirit looks like and teaches a great deal from the stories it tells; and hip-hop, which started on the streets and includes topics such as misogyny, sex, and black-on-black violence to reveal the reactions to the circumstances faced by modern African Americans.
...as considered the infants first and finest piece of clothing. The Hmong would bury the placenta outside face up because they believe that after death the soul journeys back to the placenta for rebirth. In American culture the placenta is not regarded as a special item from the labor process, or is it associated with a soul, and it is immediately discarded. However the umbilical cord is considered symbolic and is kept by many people after their child’s birth. In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down many doctors at MERCED were aware of this Hmong tradition and provided a baggie with the placenta immediately after birth. Many ethnographies like this one by Anne Fadiman has helped people from other cultures become educated on how other societies run. The point of ethnographies are to give true and real-life accounts of other cultures and that is what Fadiman did.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, notions of freedom for Black slaves and White women were distinctively different than they are now. Slavery was a form of exploitation of black slaves, whom through enslavement, lost their humanity and freedom, and were subjected to dehumanizing conditions. African women and men were often mistreated through similar ways, especially when induced to labor, they would eventually become a genderless individual in the sight of the master. Despite being considered “genderless” for labor, female slaves suddenly became women who endured sexual violence. Although a white woman was superior to the slaves, she had little power over the household, and was restricted to perform additional actions without the consent of their husbands. The enslaved women’s notion to conceive freedom was different, yet similar to the way enslaved men and white women conceived freedom. Black women during slavery fought to resist oppression in order to gain their freedom by running away, rebel against the slaveholders, or by slowing down work. Although that didn’t guarantee them absolute freedom from slavery, it helped them preserve the autonomy and a bare minimum of their human rights that otherwise, would’ve been taken away from them. Black
Deborah Gray White in Aren’t I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South theorizes that black women in the plantation south were the most vulnerable group in early America. These were black women in a white Southern society, slaves in a free American society, and women in a society ruled by men which gave them the least power and the most vulnerability in the plantation south. Their degradation was the result of American stigmas that understood black women as being promiscuous, licentious females who had high birth rates as well as a high pain tolerance. Although black women were seen as a part of the weaker sex, they were not seen as being as not seen as ineffectual. These women were sold for their abilities that include, but are not
The child labor was create back in eighteen century. It was a situation where young Children at age fourteen to sixteen was able to work in the United States and United Kingdom. During this period of time children were forced to work in factories. Some children as young as five were force to work to help their family, but at same time it was limited in some states where they considered to be illegal and people think it was violation of human right.