The Witches, Midwives and Nurses book by Ehrenreich and English is a good
source.
Anecdotally, they talk about the issue of doctors seeing midwives as
competition. My grandmother was a midwife in the rural U.S. midwest over a
century ago. She was married to an English immigrant who thought men
should handle all the money. She found that rare thing, a woman doctor,
and trained as a midwife. Women would come to their farm home late in
pregnancy, deliver, stay a week or so for recovery and return home. She
had a recipe for birth control: Boil together tannic acid, castile soap
and glycerine (Sorry I don't know the proportions.). Let it set up in a
shallow pan and cut into suppositories. The tannic acid was the
spermicidal ingredient. Of course, birth control was illegal at this time,
but since this was a home recipe, there was little risk. She lost her
patients when the roads improved and women no longer had to travel
cross-country by wagon for assistance. She did not go to their homes
because she was raising her own children at the time. But for a period of
15 years she had her own income, and spent it herself.
I should introduce myself. I am a retired sexuality educator, with
experience teaching in many kinds of groups, including religious settings.
At this point I am not teaching, but working on AIDS curricula for the
Episcopal Church and, a contrast, movie reviews for parents. The interplay
of gender and religious belief and practice has been central to much of
what I have done, and I will lurk for a while and see what happens.
Esther Walter
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
mailto:[log in to unmask]
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