Description
Book SynopsisWhy have cesarean sections become so commonplace in the United States?Between 1965 and 1987, the cesarean section rate in the United States rose precipitouslyfrom 4.5 percent to 25 percent of births. By 2009, one in three births was by cesarean, a far higher number than the 510% rate that the World Health Organization suggests is optimal. While physicians largely avoided cesareans through the mid-twentieth century, by the early twenty-first century, cesarean section was the most commonly performed surgery in the country. Although the procedure can be lifesaving, howand whydid it become so ubiquitous?Cesarean Section is the first book to chronicle this history. In exploring the creation of the complex social, cultural, economic, and medical factors leading to the surgery's increase, Jacqueline H. Wolf describes obstetricians' reliance on assorted medical technologies that weakened the skills they had traditionally employed to foster vaginal birth. She also reflects on an unsettling malp
Trade ReviewAn outstanding and fascinating contribution to the history of medicine, women's history, and modern social history. Ambitious in its chronological scope, accessibly written, and convincingly argued,
Cesarean Section offers new and original insight into the history of childbirth, as well as important broader matters, such as medical power, the technologization of hospitals, and the ethics of modern medical care.
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Canadian Bulletin of Medical HistoryWolf draws from an impressive array of medical archives, medical literature, popular women's magazines, secondary source material, and her own oral history interviews. The outcome is a monograph that contemplates the complex factors behind the evolution of risk, technology, and birthing. Wolf deftly crafts a narrative that uses the stories of women's recollections of their birthing experience as well as those of physicians as a way to reinforce her historical analysis of medical sources and data . . .
Cesarean Section will appeal to those interested in women's history and medical history as well as the relationship between culture, risk, and technology.
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Bulletin of the History of MedicineCesarean Section is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of childbirth or surgery, but also those who want to read a focused case study on the evolution of medical technologies and practices in modern America. Wolf certainly makes a major contribution to the literature on reproductive health and childbirth, but her ambitious scope and methodologies—particularly the idea of risk and her use of oral histories—offer a lot to a more general audience. It would make a welcome addition to syllabi for medical and women's history classes, particularly at the graduate level.
—Kelly S. O'Donnell, Thomas Jefferson University,
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied SciencesWolf's
Cesarean Section is a compelling study of the procedure in the history of medicine. Her skillfully balanced monograph makes extensive use of a number of primary sources . . . This book could easily be used in a history of science and medicine course due to its accessibility.
—John A. Carranza,
SynapsisTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Epitome of Risk
2. Still Too Risky?
3. Risk or Remedy?
4. Assessing Risk
5. Inflating Risk
6. Operating in a Culture of Risk
7. Giving Birth in a Culture of Risk
Notes
Glossary
Works Cited
Index
