There is little information available as to why TS was abandoned in the following decades. Both authors considered TS to be a boon to mankind, as it greatly reduced postoperative and postpartum complications from anesthesia by chloroform, ether and compressed gasses. Written by an MD well experienced in both general surgery and obstetrics (Bertha van Hooten), the book also contains several accounts of the mother's psychological state by the co-author and psychologist, Elisabeth Ross Shaw. The most frequent example of the method was the mother's surprise, learning that she had a new baby when she woke up hours later. This was followed by additional injections of scopolamine alone to ensure that the mother would have no memory of the pain of her struggle. The obstetric method was called Twilight Sleep (TS), because the mother was put into a kind of sleep as soon as her labor began with an injection of the morphine and scopolamine mixture. The book describes in great informative detail the use of scopolamine and morphine both in general surgery and obstetrics, of which the latter would be of particular interest to anyone born by this procedure in the US between 1900 and the late 1960s. This book is a reprint of an historica landmark published in 1915 and looks as if it was a ripoff of Google's acquisition of the book in its library program, but published by a company having an obscure contact address.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |