Midwifery and Medicine in Boston

Though Amalie M. Kass in her new book examines the development of midwifery through the life and career of Walter Channing, she has by no means written just a history of midwifery or a Channing biography. Rather, this is a fine example of using one practitioner's career as the lens through which to view a particular subject (an emerging medical specialty) in its larger context (the practice of medicine in general). Kass informs us at the outset why the story is worth telling: "For more than fifty years, Walter Channing was the unnamed presence in the lives of countless Boston women. . . . Channing's story reveals more than the practice of obstetrics or the reproductive lives of nineteenth-century women" (pp. 3-4)

Art history · Biography · Context (archaeology) · Family medicine · Library science · Obstetrics · Specialty · Subject (documents) · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Medical History and Innovations · Medicine