The Woman Rebel (1914)In the early twentieth century,
birth control advocate Margaret Sanger published eight issues of a feminist magazine called
The Woman Rebel. During this time, discussion of sex education,
birth control, and
abortion were illegal. The magazine featured literary pieces on topics like women’s rights, love and marriage, women in the workplace, reproductive and sexual education, and
contraception.
The Woman Rebel was one of the first magazines that discussed issues that working class American women faced.
Dana Louise Raphael (1926–2016)Dana Louise Raphael was an anthropologist and breastfeeding
advocate in the US during the twentieth century. After she was unable
to breastfeed her own infant, Raphael began to research why
breastfeeding was more common in other cultures than in the US. As
part of that research, Raphael cofounded the Human Lactation Center,
where she studied the breastfeeding habits of mothers around the
world. Through that research, she coordinated with formula
manufacturers to educate women on the benefits of breastfeeding and
formula supplementation to reduce infant mortality in developing
nations. In addition, Raphael was the first person to use the word
doula to describe a childbirth support companion for laboring women.
Raphael was an advocate for the acceptance of breastfeeding around
the world, and asserted the importance of doula support for new
mothers in the form of breastfeeding education.
Twilight
SleepTwilight Sleep (
Dammerschlaf) was a form of
childbirth first used in the early twentieth century in Germany in
which drugs caused women in labor to enter a state of sleep prior to
giving birth and awake from childbirth with no recollection of the
procedure. Prior to the early twentieth century, childbirth was
performed at home and women did not have anesthetics to alleviate
the pain of childbirth. In 1906, obstetricians Bernhardt Kronig and
Karl Gauss developed the twilight sleep method to relieve
the pain of childbirth using a combination of the drugs scopolamine
and morphine. Twilight sleep contributed to changing childbirth from
an at home process to a hospital procedure and increased the use of
anesthetics in obstetrics.
Kangaroo Mother
CarePhysician researchers Edgar Rey Sanabria and Héctor
Martínez-Gómez developed the Kangaroo Mother Program in Bogotá,
Colombia, in 1979, as an alternative to conventional incubator
treatment for low birth weight infants. As of 2018, low birth weight
and its associated complications are the leading causes of infant
death, especially in developing and underdeveloped countries where
access to technology and skilled healthcare providers is limited.
Kangaroo Mother Care is a simple and low cost method for treating
low birth weight infants. Even though researchers developed the Kangaroo
Mother Care method for infants born in hospitals with limited resources,
they demonstrated that the method could be just as effective as
conventional treatments. Kangaroo Mother Care changed the standard
of care for low birth weight infants, making life-saving medical
“Improving Women’s Health”: Section 3509 of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 In 2010, US Congress enacted section 3509 of the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA, to target issues
relating to women’s health. The ACA, signed into law by US
President
Barack Obama, aimed to increase people’s access to
high-quality healthcare in the United States. Section 3509,
titled “Improving Women’s Health,” established the Office on
Women’s Health within the US Department of Health and Human
Services and in four of its agencies, the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality, the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, the
Food and Drug Administration, and the Health
Resources and Services Administration. Section 3509 of the ACA
John George Children (1777–1852)John George Children described several species of
insects and animals while working at the British Museum in
London, England, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Children also conducted research on chemical batteries called
voltaic cells and briefly studied and manufactured gunpowder.
One of the species he described, the Children’s python, or
Antaresia childreni, was used in the twenty-first
century as the subject of experiments that involved the
biological cost of reproduction in snakes. Those experiments
helped examine the importance of thermoregulation during
gestation as a possible reason for the
evolution of live
MammographyMammography or mastography is an imaging technology developed in
the twentieth century for the detection of breast cancer and other
breast abnormalities. Breast cancer is an abnormal growth in breast
tissue that can spread to other parts of the body and cause death.
Breast cancer affects about twelve percent of women worldwide. In the
twenty-first century, mammography is one of the most accurate tools
for screening and diagnosing breast cancer. A mammogram is the image
that is created after sending low-level X-rays through breast tissue while
a digital recorder captures the image. A radiologist
analyzes the mammogram to diagnose any abnormalities.
A Senographe is the instrument used to create the mammogram
to screen for breast cancer and other breast diseases. Mammography enabled physicians to
diagnose breast cancer in the early stages,
significantly decreasing the number of deaths from breast cancer.
Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994)Roger Wolcott Sperry studied the function of the nervous
system in the United States during the twentieth century. He studied split-brain
patterns in cats and
humans that result from separating the two
hemispheres of the brain after cutting the
corpus callosum, the bridge
between the two hemispheres of the brain. He found that after separating
the
corpus callosum, the two hemispheres of the brain could not
communicate and they performed functions as if the other hemisphere
did not exist. Sperry also studied optic nerve regeneration and developed the chemoaffinity hypothesis. The chemoaffinity
hypothesis stated that axons, the long fiber-like part of neurons,
Priscilla White (1900–1989)Priscilla White studied the treatment of diabetes in
mothers, pregnant women, and children during the twentieth century in
the United States. White began working with children with Type 1 diabetes in
1924 at Elliott Proctor Joslin’s practice in Boston, Massachusetts.
Type 1 diabetes is an incurable disease where the pancreas produces
little to no insulin. Insulin is a
hormone that allows the body to
use sugar from food for energy and store sugars for future use.
Joslin and White authored many publications on children and
diabetes, in 1952, White helped Joslin found the Joslin Clinic. White
noted that many of the children with whom she worked also had parents with the disease.
Her research
focused on diabetic pregnant women and female children with diabetes.
White implemented the technique of delivering infants of diabetic
<a href="/search?text=Webster%20v.%20Reproductive%20Health%20Services%20%281989%29" title="" class="lexicon-term">Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)</a> In the 1989 case
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the
US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Missouri law regulating
abortion care. The
Missouri law prohibited the use of public facilities, employees, or
funds to provide
abortion counseling or services. The law also placed restrictions on physicians who provided
abortions. A group of physicians affected by the law challenged the
constitutionality of certain sections of it. The US federal district
court that first heard the case ruled many of the challenged sections of
the law unconstitutional. The Missouri attorney general then appealed
