Childbirth

Complications that called for a doctor included hemorrhaging (e.g., from placenta previa, in which placenta covers opening of the cervix [158-159]), prolonged labor, and cessation of labor (Schwartz, 153). Monetary considerations encouraged slaveholders and physicians to leave routine childbirth to slaves (156). Most docs who attended slaves were GPs who attended no more than 5-10 childbirths a year, which precluded development of expertise in midwifery (157). On masters’ use of physicians re illness of slaves, including as a means of coercion, see Stowe, 138ff : “. . . the power given to the dollar over human well-being is never more baldly seen that it is in the thousands of small decisions that made slaves’ health a subset of owners’ finances” (139). . . . at the very moment of the summons, the slave patient’s subjectivity was objectified and subsumed into the master’s interests. The summons became a distinct genre of calls for help, one that doctors referred to as a ‘Negro call’” (140).