Browsing all posts in "Parenting".

The Family Business of the Forceps

Before the seventeenth century, when a baby wouldn’t come out, your choices were limited.
Since antiquity, the preferred method of dealing with a stalled labor was podalic version. Most midwives, we think, could perform podalic version, in which the baby was turned from head-down to foot-down. This gave the deliverer something to grab onto. Various noose-like [...]

A Fight You Cannot Win

My mother still has Grandmother’s current cake recipe on a 3×5 index card. Remember those? They’re little cards with lines on them that one wrote on with this magical implement called a “pen,” and which fit neatly into small metal boxes–boxes in which ancient kitchen wisdom was passed down from generation to generation. Some of [...]

History is Written by the Victor (or the Idiots)

History is written by the victor. It’s a phenomenon that keeps historians on their toes, as they sift through ancient documents that often contain far more propaganda than truth. The history books would look very different, say, if Germany had won WWII. We’d probably be reading about how our hero cleansed the world of those [...]

Beatrice de Planissoles Tells it All

In the year of our Lord, 1320, Beatrice de Planissoles was called to confess before the Inquisition in Pamiers, in the Midi-Pyrenees department of France (that’s 1320 CE, for those of you who care about that stuff).
Her crime was heresy.
We don’t know for sure how the Inquisition knew that Beatrice was a heretic, or how [...]

Sensitive or Capable?

Years of pop psychology have convinced us that the goal of a parent is to raise a sensitive child. We want empathy, sympathy, caring. We are told that children who display these gifts are endearing, fun, interesting.
And as long as their environment is totally stable, apparently, they do just great.
But a new study shows that [...]

Those Pieces of Paper Used to Mean Something

For those of you who don’t already know, I have a few degrees on my wall. Well, in a closet, since my office space is too full of bookshelves to find room for diplomas. But still.
I mention this because, apparently, my children have forgotten this. I don’t mind so much with the Engineer, since he’s [...]

Sacerdotal Medicine

While we make fun of premodern medicine, regularly and promiscuously (and are about to start making fun of early modern medicine, regularly and promiscuously), it is important to keep reminding ourselves that there is an end to the madness.
Modern medicine has reduced our maternal mortality from 6 out of every 1000 women (the number most [...]

I’m Confused…

Two studies came out recently on the pregnant brain.
We all know, of course, that pregnancy turns our brains to goo. It turns competent, capable professional women into quivering masses of protoplasm. Or at least, that’s what my hubby thought. The day before the test turned positive, I was on my own, a well-seasoned doc with [...]

Why Kids Believe Weird Things

Near the end of Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things,” a book well worth reading as we confront the issue of critical thinking skills and how they affect science education, I ran into one of the weirdest things of them all. If it weren’t backed up by tons of evidence, I might think Shermer [...]

The Byrth of Mankynde

In 1450, a man named Johann Laidemann left part of his estate to the little town of Frankfurt-am-Main, to be used for the attendance to the wives of poor men, while in labor. The town doctor was responsible for supervising and training the municipal midwives, who had to pass an examination (which was often given, [...]