Summary: A Midwife's Tale

A Midwife’s Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich paints a picture of how New England life was in Colonial America through the diary of Martha Ballard. Martha Ballard’s diary takes place in Maine along the Kennebec River during the time period from 1785 to 1812. In Martha’s diary, Colonial American life was dominated by religion, agriculture, trading, gender roles, and medicine. Martha Ballard’s Diary illustrates that midwives played an important role as medical healers in colonial America because they delivered babies and provided medical treatments. Colonial America was the “era of social childbirth and high premarital pregnancy rates” (Ulrich 12 & 27). Midwives during this time period in Maine played an important role in the field of medicine
Also at this time there were no stethoscope, watches with second hands, clinical thermometer, and the technique of percussion; so doctors and midwives mainly relied upon drugs, amputating surgical tools, and English remedies. Only later in the 1830s and beyond would new scientific obstetrics be developed and used in the community. The majority of medical treatments in Colonial America were also handled by midwives instead of male doctors. The only times male doctors provided medical treatments to patients were if it was a serious illness or if surgical amputations were needed. Midwives specialized in “the general care of women and children, nursing, and the administration of medical treatments of minor illnesses like skin rashes or burns” (Ulrich 49). For instance, Martha medically treated the patients of the community which consisted of mainly women and children with English medicine produced from herbs. One of the English medicine remedy was to apply “wilted fresh burdock leaves in alcohol to sore muscles” (Ulrich 52). Therefore midwives like Martha were very important in the field of medicine in Colonial America because they were “physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and morticians” (Ulrich