Quotes ~ Dr J. Whitridge Williams: 1914 Twilight Sleep book & other published sources

WORD file ~DrJWW-quotes-pathological-pain_Dec-11-2020

“…. the cultured woman of to-day has a nervous system that makes her far more susceptible to pain and to resultant shock than was her more lethargical ancestor of remote generations.”

“such cultured women are precisely the individuals who should propagate the species and thus promote the interests of the race“.

… women of primitive and barbaric tribes appear to suffer comparatively little in labor, coupled with the fact that it is civilized women of the most highly developed nervous or intellectual type who suffer most.”

Such a woman not unnaturally shrinks from the dangers and pains incident to child-bearing; yet such cultured women are precisely the individuals who should propagate the species and thus promote the interests of the race.

This seems to suggest that the excessive pains of childbirth are not a strictly a ‘natural’ concomitant of motherhood, but rather that they are an extraneous and in a sense an abnormal product of civilization.

Is there not fair warrant for the assumption that the pains which civilized women—and in particular the most delicately organized women –suffer in childbirth may be classed in this category?”

{set A} Dr JWW  (Schrivner copy)

“From “Quotes & Excerpts Nature provides that when a woman bears a child, she shall suffer the most intense pain that can be devised!  The pain of childbirth is the most intense, perhaps, to which a human be can be subjected.

…the sacred function of maternity … causes her months of illness and hours of agony;

p.12 …how has it come about that this most natural and essential function should have come to be associated with so much seemingly useless suffering.

…the wonderful effort that has been made by a band of wise physicians in Germany to give solace to the expectant mother, and to relieve the culminating hours of childbirth of their traditional terrors.

Even in this second decade of the 20^th century, … women bring forth children in sorrow, quite after the ancient fashion, unsolaced by even single whiff of the beneficent anesthetic vapors through the use of which the agonies of tortured humanity may be stepped in the waters of forgetfulness.

2. Pain as pathological aspect of labor in modern civilization among society’s cultured, educated and economically-secure (i.e. healthiest & wealthiest) female member of sociey 

“…. the cultured woman of to-day has a nervous system that makes her far more susceptible to pain and to resultant shock than was her more lethargical ancestor of remote generations.

… women of primitive and barbaric tribes appear to suffer comparatively little in labor, coupled with the fact that it is civilized women of the most highly developed nervous or intellectual type who suffer most.

Such a woman not unnaturally shrinks from the dangers and pains incident to child-bearing; yet such cultured women are precisely the individuals who should propagate the species and thus promote the interests of the race.

This seems to suggest that the excessive pains of childbirth are not a strictly a ‘natural’ concomitant of motherhood, but rather that they are an extraneous and in a sense an abnormal product of civilization.

Is there not fair warrant for the assumption that the pains which civilized women—and in particular the most delicately organized women –suffer in childbirth may be classed in this category?

Abnormal pain as an evolutionary threat to the (Caucasian & European) race ~

Considered from an evolutionary standpoint, the pains of labor appear not only uncalled for, but positively menacing to the race.

…… any trait or habit may be directly detrimental to the individual and to the race and they may be preserved, generation after generation, through the fostering influence of the hot-house conditions of civilized existence.

 

3. Evolutionary pain in white women as Darwinian segue to a perverse form of eugenics designed to promote increased birth rate among M&UC white women of European ancestry and justifying the massive and routine use of obstetrical intervention and invasive surgical procedures based on upright posture of homeo-sapiens and the large size of our brains compared to our primate ancestors.

“assuming an upright posture and in developing an enormous brain, the human race has so modified the conditions incident to child-bearing as to put upon the mother a burden that may well enough be termed abnormal in comparison with the function of motherhood as it applies to other races of animate beings”  

Everyone knows that the law of natural selection through survival of the fittest, which as Darwin taught us … does not fully apply to human beings living under the artificial conditions of civilization. These artificial conditions often determine that the less fit, rather than the most fit, individuals shall have progeny and that undesirable rather than the desirable qualities shall be perpetuated.“

The problem of making child-bearing a less hazardous ordeal and a far less painful one for these nervous and sensitive women is a problem that concerns not merely the women themselves, but the coming generations.  Let the robust, phlegmatic, nerveless woman continue to have her children without seeking the solace of narcotics or the special attendance of expert obstetricians, if she prefers.  But let her not stand in the way of securing such solace and safety for her more sensitive sisters.

… every patient who goes to the hospital may have full assurance that she will pass through what would otherwise be a dreaded ordeal in a state of blissful unconsciousness.

“In Johns Hopkins Hospital,” said Dr Williams, “no patient is conscious when she is delivered of a child. She is oblivious, under the influence of chloroform or ether.

Physiological normalcy as an impediment to medicalization

That word “physiological” has all along stood as a barrier in the way of progress.

The truth is that in assuming an upright posture and in developing an enormous brain, the human race has so modified the conditions incident to child-bearing as to put upon the mother a burden that may well enough be termed abnormal in comparison with the function of motherhood as it applies to other races of animate beings.

Moreover, … the displacement of the uterus after parturition is a condition of unknown cause, notwithstanding its frequency and the severe character of the suffering that it ultimately entails.

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Convincing the economically-secure women to have a hospital birth because normal childbirth smart, socially successful, educated, sensitive, and ‘delicate’ women like them, had been genetically damage by “the hothouse conditions of civilization” that made normal labor pathologically painful and dangerous, causing many new mothers to have a nervious breakdown that required them to be institutionalzed in a mental hospital after they gave birth.

 

However, this evolutionary fluk did not affect immigrants and poor working-class women, being a problem only for the healthiest and wealthiest of the upper classes.

 

Even more bizarre is telling the healthiest and wealthiest of these families for them, and the reason is because and women like themselves. That is is to explain why (and they alone!) NEED massive amounts of medical and surgical interventions in what otherwise would have been a natural spontaneous biological process.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Dr JWW Dreams Motives Post #1 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

The first four of the book’s eight chapters and might best be described as form of “Obstetrical Darwinism“ as Dr. Williams refers to Darwin Theory of Evolution as an explanation for a new childbirth-related pathology that he as identified as specifically affecting “civilized” and “cultured” women of the “most highly developed type” (i.e. healthy middle and upper-class white women).

 

He described the problematic effects of civilization on this particular demographic of smart, socially sophisticated, educated, and economically-secure American wives, noting that:

 

“such cultured women are precisely the individuals who should propagate the species and thus promote the interests of the race“.

 

This concept also expresses his belief that the lower classes, especially immigrants and black and brown people were ‘precisely’ the type of people who should NOT be “propagating the species”. Therefore upper-class white women had to be convinced to have more babies!

 

Dr. Williams paints a Darwinian picture of a devolving evolution due to “the hot-house conditions of civilized existence.” He explains:

“These artificial conditions often determine that the less fit rather than the most fit individuals shall have progeny and that undesirable rather than the desirable qualities shall be perpetuated.”

 

The problem Dr. William’s alluding to is a pathological level of childbirth-related pain experienced by healthy women in this demographic.

 

This extreme pain caused dangerous levels of psyche distress that were a shock to the system of these naturally “nervous and sensitive women” were overwhelmed and mentally unable to cope.

 

This was especially severe for the most ‘delicate‘ type of women. The normal pain of a spontaneous labor and birth put these women at great risk of a nervous breakdown, so severe that prolonged hospitalization in a mental institution would become necessary.

 

Dr. Williams pointed out the many problems that could befall husbands if they were so unlucky as to have their wives languishing away in an asylum for weeks or months after giving birth, leaving their husbands to care for the older children and a newborn, while also attempting to earn a living and pay the mental institution.

 

To prevent these horrific problems for wives that were intelligent, sensitive or delicate (and whose wife doesn’t fit into at least one of those categories), Dr. Williams instructed husbands about the “Simple Discoveries in Painless Childbirth” described in his book, and strongly recommends that these men no longer permit their wives to have a baby at home under the care of a community midwife or country doctor.

 

Instead, the smart thing to do is insist that their wives go immediately to the hospital when labor begins. Then their wives should be properly medicated with frequently repeated doses of Twilight Sleep drugs throughout the many hours of labor and only be allowed to give birth after being rendered unconscious by general anesthesia.

 

This would prevent the ‘little woman’ from having a postpartum psychotic episode and protect her husband from becoming a victim once-removed from the dangers of a ‘natural birth’ in this ‘delicate’ demographic — that is, one without the benefit of drugs and anesthesia and associated obstetrical interventions, such as episiotomy, forceps delivery, manual removal of the placenta and stitches to close the sizable episiotomy incision.

Fortunately, and no doubt by the sheerest of happenstances, the pathological level of childbirth-related pain that required hospitalization only affected the very same middle and upper-class families that luckily could afford these much more expensive hospital-based obstetrical services.

 

In his own words: Dr. JWW’s explained that:

“… women of primitive and barbaric tribes appear to suffer comparatively little in labor, coupled with the fact that it is civilized women of the most highly developed nervous or intellectual type who suffer most.”

 

“Let the robust, phlegmatic, nerveless woman continue to have her children without seeking the solace of narcotics or the special attendance of expert obstetricians if she prefers. But let her not stand in the way of securing such solace and safety for her more sensitive sisters.”

 

“… the cultured woman of to-day has a nervous system that makes her far more susceptible to pain and to resultant shock than was her more lethargical ancestor of remote generations….”

“… every [labor] patient who goes to the hospital … will pass through what otherwise would be a dreaded ordeal in a state of blissful unconsciousness.”

 

“In Johns Hopkins Hospital, no patient is conscious when she is delivered of a child. She is oblivious, under the influence of chloroform or ether.

 

The book’s target audience was definitely not childbearing women or even the public, but certainly would be of interest to husbands who could afford to pay for hospital-based maternity care and to all the hospitals of the era that were eagerly lining up to provide this very profitable fee-for-service that included the elective hospitalization of a million or more healthy childbearing women every year as paying customers.

The Dark Side of the Moon – Institutionalizing maternity care and its consequences for healthy childbearing women and their families

 

Unfortunately for us, Dr. J. Whitridge Williams’ plan was a two-edged sword. He was a true hero that did marvelous things for the American people by providing them with dependable access to state-of-the-art hospital services. Modern medical miracles, which would someday include heart transplants and re-attaching severed limbs, were for the first time available to everyone in their own community or within reasonable driving distance. Over the last century, this certainly has saved many million lives and untold suffering.

 

But at the same time, Dr. JWW was also a villain. His economic “plan” for electively hospitalizing healthy maternity patients, which successfully financed a for-profit general hospital system all across the entire country, ALSO resulted in the most profound change in normal childbirth practices in the history of the human species.

Hospital-based obstetrical services, as the new and modern standard for childbirth in America immediately replace the personal services of a midwife with institutional-based care provided by virtual strangers.

1917: Profoundly-medicated and semi-conscious laboring woman under the influence of powerful Twilight Sleep drugs. She has been encased in the hospital’s version of a ‘straight jacket’ for her own ‘safety’. Her arms are bound so she won’t hurt herself and the restraint device is tied to the rails of the bed to prevent her from falling out bed and breaking an arm or knocking out one of her teeth in case she gets agitated (a side-effect of the drug scopolamine)

In Dr. JWW’s own words:

“… every patient who goes to the hospital may have full assurance that she will pass through what would otherwise be a dreaded ordeal in a state of blissful unconsciousness.”

On his watch, healthy childbearing women were turned into the hospitalized patients of the new surgical specialty of obstetrics and gynecology and normal childbirth became a surgical procedure ‘performed’ by a physician using forceps on a mother rendered unconscious by general anesthesia.

“In Johns Hopkins Hospital,” said Dr. Williams, “no patient is conscious when she is delivered of a child. She is oblivious, under the influence of chloroform or ether.

“Let the robust, phlegmatic, nerveless woman continue to have her children without seeking the solace of narcotics or the special attendance of expert obstetricians if she prefers. But let her not stand in the way of securing such solace and safety for her more sensitive sisters.”

As for the effect of narcotic drugs, scopolamine and anesthetics gases on the unborn baby, Dr. William’s book boldly makes the case that the baby is it is actually safer for the baby when its mother is medicated with hallucinogenic and amnesic drug scopolamine.

The very early days of hospital nurseries, in which 6 babies are bunked together in a special hospital bed

“Famed scientists disputes fetal-neonatal damage as a result of the scopolamine narcosis of its mother:

“the tendency to retard respiration on the part of the child may sometimes be beneficial, preventing the infant from inhaling too early, thus minimizing the danger of strangulation from inhalation of fluids.

It appears that statistics of the Frauenklinik show that the percentage of infant mortality is low.”

“As against an infant mortality of 16 percent [editor’s note ~ that is 160 baby deaths per 1,000 births] for the state of Baden [Germany] in the same year, a report on 421 ‘Twilight Sleep’ babies showed a death-rate of 11.6 percent [i.e. NNMR of 116 per 1,000]

“For this strikingly low mortality of the children during and after birth under semi-narcosis, an explanation was sought of Professor Ludwig Aschoff, the great German authority on morbid anatomy.

He offered the theoretic explanation that slight narcotization of the respiratory organs during birth by extremely minute quantities of scopolamine[e] is advantageous to the child, as it tends to prevent permanent obstruction of the air-passage of children by premature respiration during birth.”

This new system replaced the participation of a fully conscious and undrugged laboring woman who can talk and walk around and ask for various kinds of support and follow the suggests of other to help her be more comfortable or to push more effectively and remember the birth of her baby with a physically-immobile drugged laboring woman who is in a virtual ‘zombie’-like trace throughout her labor. No family members are allowed to be present in the L&D ward.

As a hospitalized labor patient, she will be kept lying flat in bed with leather wrist-restraints and obstetrical version of a straight-jacket until its time to move her to the delivery room for the surgical procedure of “delivery”. Normal childbirth for a healthy woman began by rendering her unconscious under general anesthesia while the surgical procedure of ‘delivery’ was performed by an obstetrically-trained physician-surgeon in a special operating room. Obstetrically managed delivery included the routine use of episiotomy, forceps, manual removal of the placenta and stitching up the episiotomy incision in her perineum.

As soon as the baby was delivered it was taken away to the hospital nursery (still unseen by its mother) so it can be closely observed for the next 12 hours to be certain that the narcotic drugs and anesthetic gases giving to its mother do not cause for her newborn baby to stop breathing or suddenly choke. The still unconscious mother will be moved to an OB recovery room for the next couple hours without yet knowing if she had a boy or a girl.