Born Southern: Childbirth, Motherhood, and Social Networks in the Old South

6. Birth and Professional Identity in the Antebellum South

137 chapter six c Birth and Professional Identity in the Antebellum South cd Dr. D. Warren Brickell, a noted New Orleans physician, complained in 1856 that “we must condemn the almost universal practice , on the part of owners and overseers, of tampering with their sick negroes for one, two, or more days before applying for medical aid.” Increasingly , doctors such as Brickell included childbirth as one of the “sicknesses” with which lay people ought not to tamper. Although agriculturalists did not necessarily desire to be as directly involved in the delivery of a child, they too felt they had an interest in the events of childbirth. The births of enslaved women, in particular, held a financial interest for plantation owners. An author in the Southern Quarterly Review suggested that “prolific” enslaved women were a matter of some concern, since “their increase is no small matter in the item of profits.” Southern jurist Thomas R. R. Cobb expressed a different but no less pressing interest in birth from a legal perspective when he argued that “from the principle of justice, the offspring, the increase of the womb, belongs to the master of the womb.” Although Cobb’s particular interest focused on the ownership of enslaved children, lawyers similarly were concerned with the issue of custody, or “ownership,” of white children. Each of these professions—doctors, planters, and lawyers—addressed the subject of birth, both to ascribe a social identity to the birthing woman and her child and, equally importantly, to lay claim to their own professional identity in antebellum society.1 Of the professions, physicians have been most clearly linked to childbirth . At least since the mid-twentieth century, medical discourse has 138 born southern dominated discussions of pregnancy and childbirth in Western culture.2 Such a perspective often obscures the struggle undertaken by physicians in the nineteenth century to establish their position as authoritative professionals . They were challenged in these aspirations by a democratic spirit and a system that allowed all manner of people to claim medical expertise. For example, Frederick Law Olmsted, in his travels through the South, stayed at the home of an illiterate man who styled himself “Doctor,” and Olmsted observed that “the title of Doctor is often popularly given at the south to druggists and vendors of popular medicines.” Charles Meigs, a professor of midwifery at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, whose classes included a large percentage of students from the South, decried those “who, while they style themselves doctors, are really not members of the Scholar vocation, and of course not physicians .” Yet Meigs found himself forced to admit that these individuals, rather than those he deemed appropriately trained, served the needs of a “major part” of the public.3 In their daily practice, physicians in the nineteenth-century South attempted to gain respect for their expertise and professional identity. Rather than relying purely on a neutral scientific authority to support them, southern doctors’ claims to a professional identity were clearly shaped by the social and cultural expectations of their region. The medical narratives created by southern physicians exhibited the assumptions that they held about the physical needs of and acceptable treatments for women, based on their different races or classes.4 Southern doctors took a particular interest in the reproduction of enslaved women. Many physicians sought to establish their professional reputations as “readers” of black women’s bodies, dabbling in the mysterious world of fertility or helping planters determine the proper balancing of productive and reproductive labor. Access to enslaved bodies gave inexperienced doctors an opportunity to hone their skills on a largely uncomplaining clientele, and annual contracts with planters to attend to their enslaved populations’ medical needs provided some doctors with a route to a steady income. Such arrangements meant that the doctor worked for the slaveowner rather than the slaves whom they attended. Thus most doctors remained firmly embedded in the hierarchy of the southern social system.5 While southern doctors managed to become increasingly professionalized in the late antebellum period, they still did not attend the major- Birth and Professional Identity in the Antebellum South 139 ity of births in the South; they had not gained ascendency over the birthing room or over public discussions surrounding birth. Dr. William Dewees could suggest that the birthing woman should “yield implicit obedience to the directions of her medical attendant; she must have no opinions of her own, as...