The contributors to this collection look into the experiences of women in the Western world going through pregnancy and birth over the last hundred years.

This edited collection looks at the experiences of women going through pregnancy and birth over the last 100 years. The essays explore the impact of the professionalization of the medical services, the factors that influenced women's decisions over their choice of healthcare and whether childbirth was seen as a natural or a medical event.

Tuberculosis was perceived for the first time in the early twentieth century as a major problem warranting state involvement in a national campaign for its eradication. This book examines the rise of the anti-tuberculosis movement in Britain, and the development of a new public health service and medical specialism, discussing why the campaign took the particular form it did. The importance of the study lies in its conception of medical history not as a series of scientific discoveries and technological developments, but as an integral part of a broader social and political scene. The patient, often neglected in medical history, is given close attention in an attempt to understand how the disease has been viewed during this century, and the impact it has had on society. Below the Magic Mountain shows that medicine cannot be understood in isolation from the society of which it is a part.

The Plunket Society, founded in 1907, has been heralded as New Zealand's most successful and famous voluntary organisation. Run by women for women, it played a vital role in the care of mothers and babies for most of the twentieth century, becoming a national and international icon. This comprehensive history of Plunket covers three broad themes: the relationship between the voluntary sector and the State in the provision of welfare, the development of paediatrics, and the relationship between health providers and their clients, the mothers. Bryder stresses, in particular, infant health and welfare, the political pressures applied by the government and medical profession, the influence of the remarkable women who shaped the fortunes of the society, and its diminishing impact in recent years. She also compares New Zealand's experience with other countries like Australia and Britain, and outlines the philosophy behind the organisation.

Natural childbirth and rooming in; artificial insemination and in vitro fertilisation; sterilisation and abortion: women's health and reproduction went through a revolution in the twentieth century as scientific advances confronted ethical and political dilemmas. In New Zealand, the major site for this revolution was National Women's Hospital. Established in Auckland in 1946, with a purpose-built building that opened in 1964, National Women's was the home of medical breakthroughs by Sir William (Bill) Liley and Sir Graham (Mont) Liggins; of the Lawson quintuplets and the 'glamorous gynaecologists'; and of scandals surrounding the 'unfortunate experiment' and the neonatal chest physiotherapy inquiry. In this major history, Linda Bryder traces the rise and fall of National Women's over half a century in order to tell a wider story of reproductive health. She uses the varying perspectives of doctors, nurses, midwives, consumer groups and patients to show how together their dialogue shaped the nature of motherhood and women's health in twentieth-century New Zealand.