Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-c75p9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-31T04:03:48.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women in the Paris Maternity Hospital: Public Policy in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Rachel G. Fuchs  and
Paul E. Knepper
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For most of the nineteenth century, French people associated hospitals with death and destitution. These institutions served as places where the poor went to die, not to be cured. As a result, hospitals (including maternity hospitals) were shelters of last resort for the poorest classes of society. Anyone who could avoid going to one of these institutions would shun them, at all possible costs. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, however, with the development of anesthesia and with the implementation of antiseptic and sterilization procedures, hospitals became safer places.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Summer 1989 , pp. 187 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1989 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ancelet, G. (1896) Essai historique et critique sur la création et transformation des Maternités à Paris. Thèse pour le doctorat en Médecine. Paris: G. Steinheil.Google Scholar
Archives de l’assistance publique (AAP) (1830-1900) L’Hôpital Port-Royal. Registres d’admission. Registres des sorties. Registres de décès. Paris.Google Scholar
Archives générales de médecine (1830) Journal 22.Google Scholar
L’Assistance publique à Paris (1900) L’Assistance publique à Paris en 1900. Paris.Google Scholar
Berlanstein, L. (1984) The Working People of Paris, 1871-1914. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Borsa, S. and Michel, C. R. (1985) Des hôpitaux en France au XIXe siècle. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Corbin, A. (1978) Les filles de noce: Misère sexuelle et prostitution aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Paris: Aubier.Google Scholar
Delaunay, P. (1909) La maternité de Paris. Paris: Jules Rousset.Google Scholar
France. Bureau de la statistique générale (1842-65) Annuaire statistique de la France. Paris: Imprimerie royale; Strasbourg: Veuve Berger-Levrault.Google Scholar
France. Bureau de la statistique générale (1871-1906) Statistique annuelle. Paris.Google Scholar
Fuchs, R. (1987) “Legislation, poverty, and child-abandonment in nineteenth-century paris.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (1): 55–80.Google Scholar
Fuchs, R. (forthcoming) “Preserving the future of France: Aid to the poor and pregnant in nineteenth-century Paris,” in Mandler, P. (ed.) The Uses of Charity: The Poor on Relief in the Nineteenth-Century Metropolis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Greene, W. (1985) LIMDEP. New York: William H. Greene.Google Scholar
Hanushek, E. and Jackson, J. (1977) Statistical Methods for Social Scientists. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Imbert, J. (1982) Hôpitaux en France. Paris: Editions privat.Google Scholar
Knibiehler, Y. and Fouquet, C. (1977) Histoire des mères. Paris: Editions Montalba.Google Scholar
Knibiehler, Y. and Fouquet, C. (1983) La femme et les médecins. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Laget, M. (1982) Naissances: L’accouchement avant l’âge de la clinique. Paris: Editions du seuil.Google Scholar
LeFort, L. (1866) Des maternités: Étude sur les maternités et les institutions charitables et d’accouchement à domicile dans les principaux états de l’Europe. Paris: Masson.Google Scholar
Léonard, J. (1978) La France médicale au XIX siècle. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Léonard, J. (1981) La médecine entre les pouvoirs et les savoirs. Paris: Aubier.Google Scholar
Loudon, I. (1986a) “Deaths in childbed from the eighteenth century to 1935.” Medical History 30: 1–41.Google Scholar
Loudon, I. (1986b) “Obstetric care, social class, and maternal mortality.” British Medical Journal 2: 606–618.Google Scholar
Martin-Fugier, A. (1979) La place des bonnes: La domesticité fémine en 1900. Paris: Grasset.Google Scholar
Martin-Fugier, A. (1983) La bourgeoise. Paris: Grasset.Google Scholar
McBride, T. (1976) The Domestic Revolution. New York: Holmes and Meier.Google Scholar
McBride, T. (1977) “The Modernization of Women’s Work.” Journal of Modern History 49: 242.Google Scholar
Napias, H. and Martin, A. J.. (1883) L’étude et les progrès de l’hygiène en France, 1878-1882. Paris.Google Scholar
Perrot, M. (1982) Le mode de vie des familles bourgeoises. Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques.Google Scholar
Schmidt, P. and Witte, A. (1984) An Economic Analysis of Crime and Justice: Theory, Methods, and Applications. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Seine Préfecture de la. Service de la statistique municipale (1880-1914) Annuaire statistique de la ville de Paris. Paris: Imprimerie municipale.Google Scholar
Shorter, E. (1982) A History of Women’s Bodies. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Tarnier, S. (1864) Memoire sur l’hygiène des hôpitaux de femmes en couches. Paris: A. Parent.Google Scholar
Temoin, S. (1859) La Maternité de Paris pendant l’année 1859. Paris: Rignoux.Google Scholar
Thébaud, F. (1986) Quand nos grand-mères donnaient la vie: La Maternité en France dans l’entre-deux guerres. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon.Google Scholar
van de Walle, E. (1974) The Female Population of France in the Nineteenth Century: A Reconstruction of 82 Departements. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar