Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/64

 liv INTRODUCTION

otomists, Wells, Atlee and Keith." ("American Journal of Obstetrics, May, 1872.)

Lewis, Winslow, "The History and Progress of Gynecology in New England," 1872.

Thomas, T. Gaillard, "A Century of American Medicine." (Section iii, Obstetrics and Gynecology, "American Journal of the Medical Sciences," vol. lxxii, 1876.)

Sims, J. M., "Annual Address of the President." ("Transactions, American Gynecological Society," 1880, Boston, 1881.)

Valentine, M. T., "Biography of Ephriam McDowell, with Life Sketches and Portraits of Prominent Members of the Medical Profes- sion," 1897.

"Transactions of the American Gynecological Society," 1909, vol. xxxiv. McDowell Centennial Number.

Howard A. Kelly.

History of Obstetrics.

Europe had a galaxy of distinguished obstetricians and a respectable body of obstetrical literature before America ever thought of this funda- mental branch as in any sense scientific, for parturition in the colonial days was considered a simple physiological function to be absolved in secrecy with a friend or a midwife at the bedside.

The first reference to a "male obstetrician" appears in a New York paper of 1745 which notes "the universal regret and sorrow" of the city that "Mr. John Dupuy, M. D., man-midwife" had died. The next obstetrician we hear of was Dr. John Moultrie, of South Carolina, practising there from 1733-1773 (Thacher), whose death created so great grief that depression laid such a heavy hand on women in labor and they lost courage and died.

Next appear three men, fresh from study under Hunter and Smellie, James Lloyd in Boston, William Hunter in Rhode Island, and William Shippen, Jr., in Philadelphia. Hunter gave the first medical lecture in America, and Shippen (1736-1808) was the first professor of midwifery in 1780 (University of Pennsylvania), including with that branch those

of anatomy and surgery. Shippen provided " a convenient lodging

under the care of a sober, honest matron " for poor lying-in women. He began his lectures on midwifery in the year 1762, after announcing his course in the" Pennsylvania Gazette."

The Revolution (1776) overturned all chairs for awhile, but later we find midwifery or obstetrics conjoined in one chair with medical jurispru- dence, physics, surgery and anatomy.

Philadelphia continued to lead in systematic teaching, for in 1810 Thomas Chalkley James (1766-1835) became professor of obstetrics