A History of Childbirth: Conception

a history of childbirth throughout history one thing has had more impact on women's lives than almost anything else giving birth to children in this three-part series we will explore various aspects of this paramount and awe inspiring process and how it has changed across cultures and through time from how we think about conception and fertility to some rather kooky pregnancy tests from the day-to-day realities of pregnancy and how pregnant women were seen by their communities to the changing medical practices surrounding that most amazing and a dangerous moment in women's lives childbirth part 1 conception where do babies come from today anyone who paid attention in their life science class can tell you but before microscopic eggs and sperm were discovered people had no idea what went on in there and they came up with some rather interesting theories about how new human life was made it is thought that it took some time for early hunter-gatherers to make the connection between sex and pregnancy after all sex often occurs without a resulting pregnancy and signs of conception do not appear until months after the act it is thought that people in the Fertile Crescent finally caught on to the connection between sex and pregnancy when they began domesticating animals around 11,000 years ago figuring out that putting male and female animals together resulted in more animals would have been vital for domestication ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believes that all animals could be divided into two groups bloodless animals insects crustaceans and other invertebrates that generated spontaneously and blooded animals that required mating to reproduce he theorized that female supplied at the matter in the form of minstrel blood while the male seed gave the offspring form like a steel stamping hot wax or a seed that was planted in fertile ground Hippocrates known as the father of Medicine argued that both males and females produce seed which had to be a commingled to create new life but as there was no evidence of female seed this theory was not widely accepted the major monotheistic religions of the West Judaism Christianity and Islam went with Aristotle's seed planting theory the ancient Greeks also believed that the womb called the hysteric ah was a separate entity that could move around a woman's body if it went to her head she would become hysterical if a woman wanted to become pregnant she should insert something sweet into her vagina to attract the womb there conversely if she did not wish to conceive she should try something smelly like garlic in the Middle Ages it was widely believed that a woman naturally cold needed a man's heat to conceive during the Enlightenment it was theorized that microscopic babies existed inside a woman's womb and they required male seed to set their growth into motion sperm was first observed through a microscope in 1677 by Dutch scientist Antony Vonleh who it took another hundred and fifty years for the female mammalian egg to be discovered by German scientist Karl Ernst von Barr the fusion of the egg and sperm of a starfish was observed by German zoologist Oscar hare twig in 1876 and the mystery of conception was finally solved encouraging fertility with so many off base theories about how life began many cultures throughout history saw infertility as a woman's problem and the role of men in conception was rarely questioned women who wanted to conceive tried a lot of interesting techniques to make it happen fertility goddesses were prayed to and offered sacrifices in almost every culture throughout the world Bastet and Isis in ancient Egypt chamalla by the Aztecs mama ochio by the Inca Haumea by native hawaiians banca mundi by hindus cachito chen in japan Brigid by the Celts Freya by the Norse mafia by the ancient Greeks the Virgin Mary by Catholics and the list goes on often women who desire to conceive would make special pilgrimages to altars or sacred places to pray and make offerings to these goddesses ancient Persian parents would dedicate their daughters to an ajita goddess of the moon and fertility the young women would live and worship at her temple and engage in religious prostitution the girls who accepted the largest number of men were thought to be the most blessed by the goddess and would be highly sought after as wives when their time at the temple was over both ancient Babylonia and Chinese put a great deal of faith in astrology women would consult astrologists to chart the stars and advise them on the best times of the month and year for conception the placenta the organ that supports the life of a growing fetus and is delivered shortly after the baby was prized by many cultures to promote fertility women in Eastern Europe would bite a freshly delivered placenta and Chinese and Japanese women ate dried placenta women in Transylvania who did not want to have any more children would burn their placenta and place the ashes in their husband's drink consuming the reproductive organs of various animals has also been a popular fertility aid throughout the world the ancient Egyptian bieber's papyrus suggests a rather interesting test for determining fertility the juice of a watermelon is to be mixed with the milk of a mother who has borne a son and said to the woman in question if she vomits she is fertile if she only has flatulence she will never bear again ancient Roman medical writer plenty the elder had two creative suggestions for ensuring conception a woman could either eat the eye of a hyena with licorice and dill or pluck two hairs from the tail of a female donkey that is being mounted and knot them together during sex the medieval church exercised a great deal of control over the sex lives of the people sex was seen as a sin and a necessary evil to be performed only for procreation the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary a pregnancy without the sin of sex was seen as ideal but that didn't work for most people the church forbid sex during Lindt advent with some week Easter week on feast days and fast days Sundays Wednesdays Fridays and Saturdays that meant that there were only a hundred and five days of the year where sex was permitted sex was also prohibited during pregnancy breastfeeding and menstruation during daylight while naked and while in church but we're still here so it's safe to bet that most of these decrees were not strictly followed ironically the men dictating these rules were monks and priests who were supposed to be celibate so we're particularly under qualified to educate others on sex and reproduction most of the advice they offered on fertility was to pray to God and the Virgin Mary or in particularly desperate circumstances to make a pilgrimage Henry the eighth's first wife Catherine of Aragon suffered multiple miscarriages and stillbirths she made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Freud's WYD to pray for a healthy son but her prayers were never answered Henry the eighth's desire for a male heir was well known and many men of his time shared this desire medieval medical book the trishula recommends that if a woman desire to conceive a man child she must take the womb of hair dry it powder it and drink it in wine if she desired a made child she should do the same with the hares testicles Marie Antoinette was married to louis xvi of france for seven years without bearing any children and she was blamed and hated for failing to produce a future king it is believed that Louis doctors finally determined that he was suffering from phimosis a condition where the foreskin is too tight and causes painful erections it is also suspected that the shy young couple didn't understand the mechanics of sex once Louis was circumcised and explained the birds and the bees the couple had four children in the 1700s London dr. James Graham set up a fertility clinic he called the temple of Health there his patients would listen to soft music while Graham the high priest would administer mild electrical shocks and his famous ethereal balm if a couple was really struggling for 500 guineas about 700 dollars today a night could be booked in the celestial bed where the couple would receive regular volts of electricity while making love George jana duchess of devonshire was a patient artificial insemination was first tried in animals in the late 18th century and was successfully performed in a human in 1799 the first baby born via in vitro fertilization or IVF was Louise Brown in 1978 her team of doctors was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine this medical breakthrough gives millions of people struggling with infertility a real chance at conception today about 4 million babies are conceived via IVF in the US alone pregnancy tests in the past determining pregnancy it wasn't as easy as peeing on a stick prior to the 20th century only wealthy women had access to consistent nutritious food women with poor or irregular diets often had irregular menstrual cycles so a missed period wasn't always a sure sign of pregnancy a woman might guess that she was with child if she had symptoms such as sore breasts morning sickness or a swollen belly but the only sure way to know was when she began to feel the baby move called the quickening which usually happens about four months in women tried a variety of ways to find out earlier ancient Egyptian women would mix their urine into a bag of wheat and barley if the grain germinated then the woman was assumed pregnant if the wheat sprouted a baby girl would be expected if the barley a baby boy remarkably a study in 1963 found that this test actually worked the urine of a pregnant woman would cause the wheat and barley to sprout 70% of the time while the urine of non pregnant women and men did not the gender predicting aspect was not conclusive both the Egyptians and Hippocrates suggested a woman who thought she might be pregnant insert an onion into her vagina overnight if her breath smelled of onions the next morning then she was not pregnant the idea was that if she was not pregnant her womb would be open and the smell would travel directly to her mouth if she was pregnant then her womb would be closed blocking the scent clearly there was a lack of understanding a female anatomy at work many doctors in history were onto something that the Wii of a pregnant woman and contains special properties European doctors from the Middle Ages on used urine in a variety of ways to try and determine pregnancy everything from observing the color and quality - dropping keys into it - mixing it with wine smelling it and even tasting it was attempted 16th century optometrist Jacques Guillermo thought that pregnancy could be determined through an eye exam he wrote that a pregnant woman gets deep set eyes with small pupils dropping lids and swollen little veins in the corners of the eye there is not much truth to this theory but women do become extremely tired in the first few months of pregnancy in the 19th century doctors observed that about 6 to 8 weeks into pregnancy the cervix labia and vagina can take on a dark blue or purplish hue owing to the increased blood flow to the area this became known as Chadwicks sign after the obstetrician who brought it up at the 1886 meeting of the american biological society but the prudish doctors of the Victorian era rarely conducted physical examinations on their female patients so this logical method of determining pregnancy it was not utilized as it could have been in the 1920s German scientists a shine and Xun deck determined that there was a specific hormone at present in the urine of pregnant women that was linked to ovarian growth today we know this hormone as human chorionic gonadotropin or HCG they discovered that if you injected the urine of a pregnant woman into an immature female mouse or rabbit and then autopsy the poor beast five days later growth in the ovaries indicated a pregnancy the term the rabbit died became slang for pregnancy though in actuality all the rabbits died it was later discovered that urine could also be injected into a female frog and if the amphibian produced eggs within 24 hours the woman was pregnant and the Frog would live the first at-home pregnancy test which detected HCG in a woman's urine was patented in 1969 and became widely available in the 1970s though there were concerns about sexual immorality and women being able to cope with test results without a doctor today easy at home pregnancy tests are cheap to produce and widely available in the next episode we'll look at pregnancy through the ages what expectant mothers were told they mustn't eat how they dressed and why some women spent nearly their entire adult lives pregnant if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe comment your thoughts and check out my other royal history videos if you really want to help please consider supporting me on patreon a link is in the description thank you for watching

Channel: History Tea Time with Lindsay Holiday

Views: 1,269,214

Keywords: history, documentary, royalty, bbc, middle ages, medieval, british history, scandal, pregnancy, feminist, women, obgyn, obstetrics, 9 months, labor, delivery, medical, medicine, midwife, doctor, giving birth, birth control, wwi, condoms, victorian, ancient egypt, ancient greece, ancient rome, hippocrates, medical history, motherhood, women's liberation, pregnancy test, maternity fashion, marie antionette, catherine aragon, ivf, placenta, henry viii

Id: _A8yKzJN-C0

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/voregeois]

love this channel!!

[u/OliveTheCopy]

I've learned so much history from this channel, I thought it deserved a shout-out. Some of these stories make me cringe to imagine what our female ancestors had to go through.

[u/yesimthatvalentine]

That couple looks miserable.

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Snapshots:

1. A history of misconceptions about c... - archive.org, archive.today

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