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Hanna Rion and The Weekly Dispatch's twilight sleep crusade.

Eleanor Taylor1

  • 1School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK et463@cam.ac.uk.

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Twilight sleep, using scopolamine and morphine, offered obstetric pain relief and memory loss during childbirth. Its rise in Britain reflected societal concerns and empowered women as medical consumers.

Keywords:
AnaesthesiaMedical humanitiesmidwiferyobstetricspregnancy

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Area of Science:

  • Medical History
  • Obstetrics
  • Pharmacology

Background:

  • Twilight sleep, a method of obstetric pain relief using scopolamine and morphine, is an under-researched area of British medical history.
  • Historical discussion of twilight sleep primarily occurred in newspapers, leading to its neglect in scholarly medical literature.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To reconstruct the history of twilight sleep in Britain using digitized newspapers and medical journals.
  • To analyze the social and historical context of twilight sleep's popularity, including its connection to declining birth rates and World War I.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized digitized newspaper archives, focusing on the Weekly Dispatch.
  • Incorporated analysis of medical journals to provide a comprehensive view of twilight sleep's adoption.
  • Examined the advocacy of key figures like Hanna Rion and public responses to the therapy.

Main Results:

  • Twilight sleep gained popularity in Britain in 1915, mirroring its earlier rise in America.
  • Advocacy for twilight sleep, notably by Hanna Rion, coincided with concerns over birth rates during WWI.
  • The study reveals women acting as consumers shaping medical practice, predating the natural childbirth movement.

Conclusions:

  • Twilight sleep represents a crucial, overlooked link between early anesthetics like chloroform and the later natural childbirth movement.
  • The adoption of twilight sleep highlights evolving patient agency and the influence of public discourse on medical practices.
  • This research fills a gap in understanding obstetric pain relief history by integrating popular press and medical records.