A short, interactive history of Labor & Delivery Nursing

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Historical facts about labor & delivery care:

• In biblical times, midwives delivered babies and educated young women about having children. Midwives were regulated under Moses.
• In the Middle Ages (500 – 1600 AD), surgeons asserted that their modern techniques were better than existing midwifery practices and pushed to have them outlawed.
• In 1513, the first obstetric textbook was published. It was a bestseller titled Der Schwangern Frauen und Hebamen Rosengarten and was commonly referred to simply as “The Rosengarten.”
• The first recorded caesarean section was performed by an Irish midwife, Mary Donally, in 1738.
• Dr. William Shippen offered the first formal training for labor & delivery clinicians in 1765.
• The word “obstetrician” was coined, formed from the Latin meaning “to stand before.”
• In the 1890s, urbanization and industrialization led to an increase in hospitals and hospitalized birth increased.
• Infection was the most common cause of death of mothers accounting for 40% – 55% of maternal mortality through the 1930s.
• Beginning in the 1930s, obstetric research increased to find easier, safer, and faster ways for women to give birth.
• One study found that 41% of infant mortality due to birth injuries resulted from “obstetrical interference.”
• Labor & delivery rooms were introduced in hospitals in the late 1980s.

Sources: Allison McKinley, Midwifery Today, Postgraduate Medical Journal, The Start of Life: A History of Obstetrics