Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The First Encounters
- 2 Maternity Hospitals
- 3 Colonial Midwives
- 4 The Bà mụ and Childbirth Pluralism
- 5 Scientific Motherhood and the Teaching of Maternity
- 6 The Depression Era and the Discovery of the Child
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The First Encounters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The First Encounters
- 2 Maternity Hospitals
- 3 Colonial Midwives
- 4 The Bà mụ and Childbirth Pluralism
- 5 Scientific Motherhood and the Teaching of Maternity
- 6 The Depression Era and the Discovery of the Child
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
When a woman's due date came, she was put in a small dark room lit by a single lamp. Under her simple bamboo bed was a clay stove of charcoal fire that would keep the bed heated during the delivery and for one month aft er. The Annamese (Vietnamese) believed that the high temperature would speed the discharge of the aft erbirth and the “bad blood” from a woman's body. Th is bắc nằm lửa (lyingnear-the-fire) practice was applied to every social class, from the peasants, coolies, and merchants to the Chinese and the royal family. The bà mụ (Vietnamese traditional midwife) handled the birth delivery while a sorcerer performed a spiritual ceremony to ward off evil spirits from harming the mother and her child. When the child was born, bà mụ tied the cord with a piece of ordinary sewing thread and then cut it with a bamboo or porcelain blade.
This description was part of a survey conducted in 1907 by the French doctor A. Duvigneau on childbirth practices in Huế, a city in central Vietnam. In his mission civilisatrice in Indochina, Dr. Duvigneau, as well as many other French physicians and anthropologists, was captivated by Vietnamese childbirth traditions and their associated medical and cultural features, many of which were unknown to the Western medical community. Vietnamese birthing customs soon became an object of scrutiny and research as French physicians and anthropologists conducted official surveys on the pathology and ethnology of Vietnamese people. As military conflict wound down in the late 1880s, research on the local milieu and people was deemed crucial to the ensuing pacification campaigns. French interest in indigenous practices of birthing and childrearing also stemmed from an increased curiosity in the metropole about the peoples of the Far East, whose exotic culture and lifestyle seemed to amaze French audiences. The fascination with Vietnamese traditions, however, turned into a grave concern about the high infant mortality rates, which, in places such as Saigon, rose to 27.2 percent (1905) of newborns and 42.6 percent (1904) of infants under one year old. Umbilical tetanus, a deadly disease caused by the infection of the cord stump, was responsible for more than 40 percent of fatal cases.
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016