Childbed fever was by the far the most common cause of deaths associated with childbirth up to the Second World War, throughout Britain and Europe. Otherwise known as puerperal fever, it was an infection which followed childbirth and caused thousands of miserable and agonizing deaths every year. This book provides the first detailed account of this tragic disease from its recognition in the eighteenth century up to the second half of the twentieth century, examining it within a fully comprehensive history of infective diseases.

Unlike most histories of the medical profession between 1750 and 1850, which focus on a small handful of famous doctors and their discoveries, this book concentrates on the neglected but far larger group of rank and file practitioners: the surgeon-apothecaries of the late 18th century and the general practitioners of the early 19th century. Delving into an array of manuscript sources, Loudon examines their social and economic status, their background and training, their scientific methods and medical challenges, and their patients and pay-scales. He demonstrates that they actually faced unparalleled intraprofessional rivalry in an overcrowded profession during these years -- the effects of which are still seen in the structure of Britain's medical establishment today.

This is the first history of general practice under the National Health Service, from 1948 to the present. It is written by a team of contributors all of whom have, in various ways, been deeply involved in the development of primary health care in Britain. Between them, they cover all the main aspects of general practice, including changing concepts of illness and clinial practices, politics and organization, medical education, public relations, and international comparisons. They examine how the relative stagnation of the early years, when morale and funding were low, gave way to a renaissance in general practice in the 1960s which changed the service out of all recognition. // Published with an extensive chronology and statistical appendix, this book will serve as an essential reference for medical historians and for the wide variety of people involved in health-care services, both in Britain and the wider world. fifty years, from 1948 to the present. It is written in a clear and accessible manner by a team of distinguished medical historians, many of whom are, or have been, general practitioners deeply involved in the development of primary health care services in this country. The book covers all the main aspects of general practice, including changing concepts of illness and clinical practices, politics and organization, medical education, public relations, and international comparisons. Between them, the contributors show how the oldest branch of medicine gradually rediscovered its role alongside the rapid advances of specialized medicine. They explain how, after a period of relative stagnation in the 1960s, there followed a renaissance in general practice which changed the service out of all recognition. Published with an extensive chronology and statistical appendix, this book will serve as an essential reference for medical historians as well as the wide variety of people involved in the health care services.

This is the first international study of maternal care and maternal mortality. Over the last two hundred years, different countries developed quite different systems of maternal care. Death in Childbirth is a meticulously researched analysis, firmly grounded in the available statistics, of the evolution of those systems between 1800 and 1950 in Britain, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and on the continent of Europe. Irvine Loudon examines the effectiveness of various forms of maternal care by means of the measurement of maternal mortality - the number of women who died as a result of childbirth. His scholarly and comprehensive study sets out to answer a number of important questions. What was the relative risk of a home or hospital delivery, or a delivery by a midwife as opposed to a doctor? What was the safest country in which to have a baby, and what were the factors which accounted for enormous international differences? Why, against all expectations, did maternal mortality fail to decline significantly until the late 1930s? Death in Childbirth makes an invaluable contribution to medical and social history.