Rima D. Apple

The Medicalization of Infant Feeding in the United States and New Zealand: Two Countries, One Experience:

In barely more than half a century, between the 1880s and the 1940s, infant feeding practices changed dramatically in the United States. In the nineteenth century, breastfeeding predominated, though alternatives were used in some cases. By the mid-twentieth century, the consensus of health care personnel and the general public supported medically-directed artificial infant feeding. A similar trend was apparent in New Zealand as well, although there the popularity of bottle-feeding occurred somewhat later and replaced breastfeeding more rapidly. Although the timing and pace of the shift from breastfeeding to bottle-feeding differed slightly for women in these geographically disparate parts of the world, the factors that influenced womens choices were similar (most particularly the medicalization of infant feeding and the institutionalization of childbirth), and the outcomes the same: women bottle-fed their infants.

“As Members of the Social Whole”: A History of Social Reform as a Focus of Home Economics, 1895–1940

This article studies the critical purpose of home economics postsecondary education as preparation for social reform, focusing on the role that founders expected homemakers to play in ameliorating social problems. For them, the goal of home economics was a better world. The means to this improved society was scientific knowledge applied to the family and the community by home economists and home economics-trained homemakers. Yet, by the 1920s, it was clear that the social responsibility of homemakers, as envisioned by the first leaders of the discipline, had virtually disappeared from the rhetoric of home economics. Although no one factor explains the silencing of calls for civic involvement on the part of homemakers, factors external of the discipline, including federal legislation and directed appropriations, developing education theories, growing emphasis on professional specialization, increased employment opportunities for women, and a redefinition of womens familial role served to redirect the focus of the field.

Seeking Perfect Motherhood: Women, Medicine, and Libraries

Knowledge about health and medicine expanded dramatically in the first half of the twentieth century. This expansion raised an important question for women, especially mothers, who are traditionally responsible for the health of their families: where could they learn the most up-to-date information? One possible significant venue was the public library. This close study of five public libraries analyzes the diverse sources of scientific and medical information available in Midwest rural libraries. It documents the critical role that individual librarians played in bringing new sources to their patrons, and discloses that such collections reinforced contemporary medical orthodoxy.

Science in the marketplace: Acnotabs and the Food and Drug Administration

Though acne is not a life-threatening condition, it is a highly emotionally charged one, particularly for teenagers. In the early 1960s, when the Pannett Company used medical and scientific claims to convince adolescents to purchase their product, Acnotabs, their amazing advertising claims attracted the attention of the US Food and Drug Administration. Typically the Agency seized a product it considered mislabelled in terms of its ingredients or its efficacy; and most companies, not willing to face a potentially expensive fight, did not object to the action. In effect, they allowed the courts to issue a condernnation order by default. The Pannett Company, however, resisted the FDAs seizure and decided to present their case for Acnotabs in court. The Company insisted that their tests had demonstrated the usefulness of Acnotabs in treating the skin condition. The FDA claimed that there was no evidence for the effectiveness of Acnotabs and, moreover, that scientific and medical theory denied that the ingredients in Acnotabs would cure acne. The records of this case provide a unique demonstration of how a layperson, a judge, evaluated competing definitions of science and scientific proof.

The Nature & Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America by Marga Vicedo (review)

The power of the mother to mold the child, to determine the shape of the future adult’s mental health, in positive or negative ways, is a common trope in U.S. culture. (Think Anthony Perkins in the film Psycho.) Vicedo’s The Nature & Nurture of Love carefully teases out the many layers of its scientific exploration in the Cold War. Vicedo begins with the commonly accepted history that places the research of John Bowlby and Karl Lorenz at the center of these developments, but then, most critically, she details how these and other scientists presented their theories to the scientific community and argued them. Researchers like Bowlby and Lorenz did not work in isolation. Vicedo’s study draws out how these scientists built on each other’s findings and worked in concert to promote their theories. A prime example of this analysis is chapter 3, in which Vicedo places the question of the maternal role in the social and cultural context of the United States in the 1950s, with women’s employment outside the home increasing, with concern over the rising divorce rate, and with fears over growing rates of juvenile delinquency. She then documents the path by which Bowlby integrated Lorenz’s ethology into his psychological theories, in effect defining mother love and love of mother as biological instincts. In doing so, she explains, Bowlby sought to answer his opponents and to realize Freud’s belief that someday biology would clarify the idea of instinct. This gave the mother the primary role in the child’s development, and equated maternal care with biology. The stay-at-home mother was required both to meet her child’s emotional needs and to satisfy society’s need for order. These theories generated vigorous support but also vehement opposition. Other chapters deal with the opposition Bowlby and Lorenz faced. In examining Lorenz’s theories in greater depth and examining the arguments of those who rejected his interpretation of behavior, Vicedo traces out the steps that researchers such as Daniel Lehrman and Robert Hinde took to critique Lorenz’s claims

Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction

In fact, Rack concluded that legal representation bore little effect on mediation outcomes, which suggests that these particular lawyers had paid attention to the grizzled law professor. Contrary to expectations, gender had little to do with mediation outcomes, either. But Rack concluded that ethnicity exerted a definite influence on mediation outcomes: Latinos fared worse than Anglos in mediation. Finally, corporate parties tended to walk away with more favorable agreements than individuals. The book’s conclusions are based on both statistical analyses and case studies. However, some of the analyses supply meager statistically significant results. For example, Table 6.1 (pp. 108–109) lists regression coefficients for predictors of money outcomes between adjudicated and mediated disputes. Among the six categories of ascriptive status and three models each for adjudicated and mediated cases, only eight of the thirty-six coefficients are statistically significant at the 0.05 level. At the 0.10 level, the number of statistically significant coefficients increases to only thirteen of thirty-six. Rack used two-tailed tests in all her statistical analyses. Because Rack’s research hypotheses were unidirectional (she inquired to what degree Latinos and women suffered discrimination in mediation), a one-tailed test might have been more appropriate and likely would have led to a larger number of statistically significant results. As a minor criticism, the book could have been structured more effectively. In the introduction, Rack discusses the MetroCourt Project, but she does not tell the reader much about it until chapter 4 (“The MetroCourt Project”). Similarly, Rack discusses nonmonetary outcomes throughout the book without telling the reader much about what they might be until chapter 10 (“Case Studies”) where, for the first time, the reader is exposed to the daily grist for the mediation mill. MetroCourt cases ostensibly involve money, but the case studies showed family disputes or the need for a simple apology to be among some of the reasons for a court filing. Rack’s book displays her extensive knowledge of New Mexican culture and history; Rack’s knowledge of MetroCourt mediation is encyclopedic. The book’s conclusions—complete with questions about them that Rack herself poses—are set forth in the expected rigorous manner. In places, the book is uneven because theoretical discussions, themselves sometimes overly long, disrupt the flow of the book. But one interested in learning how ethnicity affects mediation should not pass on this book.

Educating mothers: the wisconsin bureau of maternal and child health

Abstract Health-care providers, social reformers, educators, and politicians were joined in a concerted effort to improve maternal and child health in the USA in the inter-war period. Identifying the critical role of mothers in this endeavor, their campaigns were designed to educate women in ‘modern,’ appropriate childcare practices predicated on middle-class standards for urban families with the financial and medical resources to carry out such health-care prescriptions. Mothers who could not afford a private physician were urged to visit clinics emerging in American cities. Few historians have examined in any great depth the day-to-day issues faced by mothers or the role of public health nurses in these extensive campaigns. Most particularly, the experiences of rural mothers are only now receiving much attention. This article analyzes the work of public health nurses employed by the Department of Maternal and Child Health in the state of Wisconsin, who endeavored to bring modern science and medicine to mothers. Yet, at the same time they were forced to cope with local and national politics and with the strictures of the US medical system, namely, the separation of ‘public health’ and ‘private medicine’ in which medical treatment remained in the hands of private physicians and the activities of public health nurses were limited to health education. Their writings show nurses struggling both with the problems of rural poverty and with the constraints of public health within contemporary gender relations.

From Home to Hospital: Jewish and Italian American Women and Childbirth, 1920-1940 (review)

Reaching beyond the study of professional obstetrics, historians have uncovered a rich diversity of childbirth practices and beliefs. They often find ethnicity and generational differences to be useful lenses for examining changing values and routines in childbirth. For example, Charlotte Borst’s investigation of midwifery in Wisconsin highlights the significance of the parturient’s ethnicity in the selection of birth attendant; her recognition of the importance of ethnic identification helps explain the shift from midwives to physicians. Similarly, Jacquelyn Litt’s articles cogently demonstrate both cultural continuities and discontinuities over several generations of Jewish American women.1 These authors are now joined by Angela Danzi with her close study of Jewish and Italian American women who birthed at home and in hospitals and clinics during the period between the World Wars. Danzi observes that before 1920, most Jewish and Italian immigrant women relied on midwives to help conduct home births. After 1920, most Jewish women readily turned to male physicians associated with local medical institutions, while the choices made by her Italian informants were more diverse: some continued with midwives, others utilized private physicians and hospitals associated with public clinics, still others had their earliest births at home and only later moved into the hospital. For Danzi the important question is, what explains this variety? Why did some second-generation mothers easily move into the modern hospital setting and medically directed childbirths, while others did not? The heart of Danzi’s study is a series of interviews conducted with nearly

Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth-Century America

of disease not to biological-racial factors nor to cultural practices, but to urbanization, political-racial discrimination, and material and medical deprivation. From TB to AIDS is both disturbing and disappointing. McBrides analysis of the epidemic paradigm and medicosocial policy shifts of the twentieth century demonstrates how racialism can be reconstructed. Chapter s is McBrides most valuable contribution to the history of medicine, presenting a revisionist version of the medical care policy experiences of African-American communities since World War II. In total, McBrides study is remarkable for its scope, both in chronological terms and in its discussion of the intellectual conceptualizations of epidemic disease in various health constituencies. What McBride achieves in breadth, however, he sacrifices in depth. While many would agree with McBrides conclusions about the failures of the current health care system, his arguments about confounding factors sometimes seem contrived because he has failed to provide the reader with sufficient contextual material to form an independent judgment. It was disappointing not to have more analysis of the intellectual development of black leaders, the substance of the work of black health providers, and the perceptions h~ld by the communities they served. While McBride seems to promise more than he delivers, his work will hopefully lead the way to greater sociocultural examination of African-American health.