Technological Change in Time -Vanessa M.

Starting the book has been a challenge but it has been interesting to read things that I didn’t know before about childbirth. In the introduction it begins to talk about the ways technology has changed in the late nineteen to twenty centuries. The book quotes

Birth went from home to hospital, from drug-free to drugs on delivery, from midwives to doctors…

Technology has changed birth in many ways, like using drugs. In the book it explains how many women would prefer not to use anesthetics because they thought if you use

them you couldn’t handle motherhood. When Eufame Maclayne used the pain relief people said that she would be punished. Technology was changed in the middle nineteen century when a safer anesthetic was made. Technology had changed overall  because now they have the ability to use a Tens Machine which can help with pain during childbirth.

Another change that has occured over the years has been ways of delivery. Since anesthetics were invented mothers don’t have to experience as much pain as they use to. Now when there is a problem in a pregnancy there can be an operation called C-Section. Doctors  preform this procedure when the traditional viginal birth are difficult or when the mother and child are put at risk.

Before this was discovered in the late 1500s a family named The Chamberlen’s had a medical secret that no one outside their family knew. They had invented a tool called the Forceps. This tool helped deliver many babies and became very successful. During the time the forceps were popular no one knew what the forceps looked like. The family somehow managed to sneek the tool in the delivery room with out anyone seeing.  Years after Peter the last Chamberlen died in 1813 a couple that owned the house at the time noticed a crack on the floor and after showing them to one of their friends whom was a retired suergon they found it was the forceps made from the Chamberlan family.

Today childbirth has changed because doctors have the ability to more materials that people didn’t before. In order to keep the babies in a normal temperature after they are born the doctors have the access an incubator.  Doctors before testing projects on humas do it with animals or even hospital dummies which is more safe than on a patient. Overall we have the opurtunity to work with new technology.