Abstract
There were plenty of remarkable women in America’s history in the 19th century, especially amazing when we consider how little control women had over their own lives, with husbands and fathers in charge of money and property. However, one area remained within the women’s domain: giving birth. The midwife played an essential role, staying with women as they labored, and then "catching the babies," a descriptive term still in use, and rightfully so. For as one doctor who worked with midwives commented, it was the mothers who delivered the babies, rather than he, who sometimes caught them.
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