pregnancy and birth

The Body by Bill Bryson. Lembrei-me de minha bisavó Maria link Cechella, parteira famosa em Santa Maria, Partejou muita gente importante, alguns respeitáveis médicos quando cresceram (Marsiaij, Beck...). Lembrei da alimentação e cuidados peri-natais e do AMICOR Cesar Gomes Victora

The risks of childbirth: "The business of pregnancy and birth has never been easy. However tedious and painful childbirth is now, it was much worse in the past. Until the modern era, levels of care and expertise were often pretty appalling. Just determining whether a woman was pregnant was a long-standing challenge for medical men. 'We have known a practitioner of thirty years' standing blister the abdomen in the ninth month under the idea that he was treating a morbid growth,' wrote one authority as late as 1873. The only truly reliable test, one doctor noted drily, was to wait nine months and see if a baby emerged. Medi­cal students in England weren't required to study any part of obstetrics until 1886./.../