["Where the doctors (...) handled the women beastly (...)". The Marburg lying in hospital from the view of the women].
In the statement she made in 1864, the housemaid, Elizabeth Gunkel, accused of infanticide, is reported to have said that she would have preferred to have drowned herself rather than look for a lying in hospital in which to give birth to her child. Even though they were feared by pregnant women due to the dubious--and often fatal--experiments performed there, lying in hospital continued to be the only places left for unmarried, abandoned or poverty-stricken women under financial or moral pressure to resort to. The lecture supplies a graphic illustration of the dynamics of interplay taking place in the process of medicalization within the system in which pregnant women became involved--state, legal system, church, science, traditional life-styles. As such is given a vivid picture of the daily life of women in the 19th century who became pregnant not by choice--their fears, hopes, despair and resistance to an environment in which they saw little real chance for themselves.
Metz-Becker
M
M
Institut für Europäische Ethnologie und Kulturforschung der Philipps-Universität Marburg.
D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006771:Hospitals, Maternity / Q000266:history* / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D008318:Malpractice / Q000266:history; D009774:Obstetrics / Q000266:history* / Q000592:standards; D011247:Pregnancy; D016387:Women's Health