From Home to Hospital: The Evolution of Childbirth in the United States, 1927-1940

@article{Thomasson2004FromHT,
  title={From Home to Hospital: The Evolution of Childbirth in the United States, 1927-1940},
  author={Melissa A Thomasson and Jaret Treber},
  journal={Health \& the Economy eJournal},
  year={2004}
}
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64 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
4
Background Citations
15
Methods Citations
6

64 Citations

The Captain of the Men of Death and His Shadow: Long-Run Impacts of Early Life Pneumonia Exposure
TLDR
It is found that cohorts born after the introduction of sulfa experienced increases in schooling, income, and the probability of employment, and reductions in disability rates, and it is suggested that pre-Civil Rights barriers may have inhibited their translating improved endowments into gains in education and employment.
Saving Babies: The Contribution of Sheppard-Towner to the Decline in Infant Mortality in the 1920s
TLDR
Interventions that provided one-on-one contact and opportunities for follow-up care, such as home visits by public health nurses, reduced infant deaths more than classes and conferences.
Early Life Health, Human Capital Investment and Institutions: The Captain of the Men of Death and His Shadow
TLDR
Novel evidence is provided of that the translation of early life health into later life socioeconomic status may depend critically upon its inducing complementary investments in human capital.
Call the Midwife - Health Personnel and Mortality in Norway 1887-1921
TLDR
A large and robust effect of midwives on reduced maternal mortality is found and no clear effect is found for other types of health personnel or on infant mortality.
Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men
TLDR
It is found that the disclosure of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male in 1972 is correlated with increases in medical mistrust and mortality and decreases in both outpatient and inpatient physician interactions for older black men.
Gender Roles and Medical Progress
TLDR
It is argued that this development, by enabling women to reconcile work and motherhood, was essential for the joint rise in women’s labor force participation and fertility over this period and the diffusion of infant formula played an important auxiliary role.
Saving Babies: The Impact of Public Education Programs on Infant Mortality
TLDR
Interventions that provided one-on-one contact and opportunities for follow-up care, such as home visits by nurses and the establishment of health clinics, reduced infant deaths more than did classes and conferences.
Modern Medicine and the 20th Century Decline in Mortality: Evidence on the Impact of Sulfa Drugs
TLDR
Evidence is presented that sulfa drugs were an important cause of U.S. mortality declines after their discovery in the 1930s and widened racial disparities in mortality, suggesting that new medical technology diffuses more rapidly among whites than blacks and consistent with the hypothesis that innovation initially increases inequality across population subgroups.
The Impact of Legal Abortion on Maternal Health: Looking to the Past to Inform the Present
From 1959 to 1980, abortion-related mortality declined by 97%, and maternal mortality fell by 86%. In this study, we question whether the legalization of abortion over 1969-1973 explains a portion of…
"The midwife must be abolished!": The Fall of Midwifery in Mid-Twentieth Century New Orleans
TLDR
The transition of childbirth from homes into hospitals mirrors the rise in the use of hospitals overall and it may seem reasonable to assume that movements towards hospitalization and increased medical intervention in women’s reproductive health resulted in improved infant and maternal health outcomes, but this was not always the case.
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References

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    Medical History
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To say that Irvine Loudon's Death in childbirth is a hard read might seem both offensive and paradoxical. Few studies have concentrated on the topic, none of them on international comparisons, and…
What birth has done for doctors: a historical view.
TLDR
The contributions that birth and birthing women have made to the professionalization of American medicine and to the social and economic status of doctors during the past 200 years are explored.
Civil Rights, the War on Poverty, and Black-White Convergence in Infant Mortality in Mississippi*
TLDR
It is argued that the trend shift in black infant mortality rates in the South in the mid-1960s was driven by federally mandated desegregation efforts that opened up access to hospital care for black infants.
Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America
TLDR
Planned home birth for low risk women in North America using certified professional midwives was associated with lower rates of medical intervention but similar intrapartum and neonatal mortality to that of low risk hospital births in the United States.
From Sickness to Health: The Twentieth-Century Development of U.S. Health Insurance
TLDR
A number of factors that influenced the growth of the health insurance market in the United States were identified, including demand factors such as increasing income and improvements in medical technology and federal government policies that promoted the link between employment and health insurance.
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TLDR
Against expectation the links between maternal mortality and all components of infant mortality including neonatal mortality are very slight, according to data for the United Kingdom for the period 1900-1960.
The invention of the modern hospital: Boston, 1870–1930
TLDR
Professor Williams shows in convincing medical and biographical detail that it is likely that the physical decay and death of each of them was hastened if not caused by the tertiary effects of syphilis, and there is almost no attempt to use the clinical reconstructions of the dismal lives of these writers as a beacon to illuminate their poetry and novels.
Health Care Divided: Race and Healing a Nation (review)
David Barton Smith’s Health Care Divided provides a thoughtful synthesis of a critical issue in American health care—the history of racial segregation and its long-term implications into the late…
Doctors in Crisis: A Study of the Use of Medical Education Reform to Establish Modern Professional Elitism in Medicine
TLDR
Critics assert that a shift occurred in the medical profession's ideology and public positions after World War I when organized medicine began its active campaign against any government involvement in medical care or financing.
Physician Financial Incentives and Cesarean Section Delivery
TLDR
It is argued that the 13.5% fall in fertility over the 1970-1982 period led ob/gyns to substitute from normal childbirth toward a more highly reimbursed alternative, cesarean delivery.
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