• German Midwives of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Texas:Women's Work, Culture, and Fighting "Death in the Room"
• Kathleen A. Huston*

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On March 24, 1885, German Texas midwife Lisette Mueller was called to deliver the first child of Caroline and Henry Hopf on Williams Creek, twenty miles outside of Fredericksburg, Texas. A boy was born at 10:30 am, but he was lifeless. "The child seemed dead," Mueller recorded in her diary. She was likely prepared for such a dire moment. German midwives were trained to immerse the failing infant back and forth in warm and cold water, fling its arms briskly, and blow air into its tiny nose and mouth. The intervention worked, and the infant survived. That child, Charles Hopf, grew to adulthood, probably never knowing that the midwife had saved his life.

Lisette Mueller was recruited from her professional school in Germany, Marburg Midwifery, by "Old Dr. Keidel" of Fredericksburg to come to Texas to deliver his patients. She arrived in 1884 and delivered babies in Gillespie and surrounding counties for forty years. In her "Tagebuch für die Hebamme" (Diary for the Midwife), Mueller documents the medical details of six hundred cases.¹ This casebook, now stored at the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, is one of only five known American midwife journals from before the twentieth century. But Mueller's is the only one to provide medical details of a midwife's practice.² She practiced until [End Page 413] 1931, showing the endurance of midwifery in Texas well into the twentieth century. Mueller was a highly trained professional who was esteemed in her community and whose journal shows a high survival rate of mothers and infants.

Delivery by midwife was more common than delivery by doctor in Texas, and this pattern lasted longer in the state than other parts of the country. In 1900, 50 percent of women in the United States used midwives, while 75 percent of Texas women did, a full 50 percent higher.³ In addition, as Lisette Mueller shows, midwifery was a respected profession for European immigrant women, particularly those from Germany. Formal education and professional standards for midwives were far more developed in Germany; while Anglo (native-born White women), Black, and Latina midwives were highly respected within their communities, their expertise tended to be acquired through apprenticeship or experience. In the late 1930s, birthing practices changed in Fredericksburg when "Young Dr. Keidel" opened a hospital with a maternity ward, and in Fredericksburg and elsewhere in Texas, many, although not all, women chose to have a hospital delivery with a physician.⁴ Nationwide, by the middle part of the twentieth century a concerted effort by American doctors in the Northeast diminished the standing of midwives in the United States. But their arguments were often at odds with the facts, as Lisette Mueller and other competent—and professional—women demonstrated. "Midwifery has been the almost exclusive province of women throughout recorded history," historian Jean Barrett Litoff has noted.⁵ Giving birth was a "female mystery," and only women could have knowledge of its intricacies.⁶ As a result, midwifery "is the oldest female occupation and without doubt one of the most important," with skills passed down from mothers and community wise women.⁷ In North America, midwifery from colonial days through the nineteenth century functioned within the model of "social childbirth," in which neighbor women all came to the laboring woman's home to offer sisterly support to the birthing mother, to assist [End Page 414] the attending midwife, and to learn through observation how to deliver babies.⁸ However, as early as the late eighteenth century, doctors started attending childbirth for White, upper class women.⁹

Mueller, who only spoke German, served in the German communities of the Hill Country. As urban White women in America were moving toward doctor deliveries, rural, minority, and immigrant women wanted women, and women from their own culture, in the birthing room.¹⁰ These demographics constituted a large part of Texas women. Texas immigrant women, German, Czech, Scandinavian, and Polish, lived in "ethnic islands," a term coined by...

• 19世纪和20世纪德克萨斯州的德国助产士：妇女的工作，文化和与“房间里的死亡”的斗争
• 凯瑟琳·休斯顿（Kathleen A.Huston）*

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Ø ñ中号拱24，1885年，G岳牛逼EXAS助产士大号isette中号ueller被称为交付卡罗琳和亨利·霍普夫的第一个孩子在威廉斯小河，外弗雷德里克斯堡，得克萨斯州二十里。一个男孩在上午10:30出生，但是他死了。穆勒在日记中写道：“孩子似乎已经死了。” 她可能已经为这样一个可怕的时刻做好了准备。对德国助产士进行了培训，以使其将来回的婴儿沉浸在冷热水中，手臂轻快地跳动，并向其微小的鼻子和嘴巴吹入空气。干预行之有效，婴儿得以幸存。那个孩子查尔斯·霍普夫（Charles Hopf）长大了，可能永远不知道助产士救了他的命。

Lisette Mueller由弗雷德里克斯堡（Fredericksburg）的“老基德（John Keidel）”从她在德国的专业学校Marburg Midwifery招募，来到得克萨斯州分娩。她于1884年到达，在吉莱斯皮（Gillespie）和周围的县分娩了40年的婴儿。穆勒（Mueller）在她的《助产士日记》（Tagebuchfürdie Hebamme）中记录了600例病例的医疗细节。¹这本案例集现在存放在弗雷德里克斯堡的尼米兹博物馆，是二十世纪前美国仅有的五种已知的助产士期刊之一。但穆勒（Mueller）是唯一提供助产士医疗细节的人。²她一直练习到[End Page 413]1931年，显示了得克萨斯州到20世纪的助产士的耐力。穆勒（Mueller）是一位训练有素的专业人员，在她的社区中受人尊敬，其日记显示母亲和婴儿的成活率很高。

在得克萨斯州，助产士的分娩比医生分娩的情况更为普遍，而且该州比美国其他地区持续的时间更长。1900年，美国有50％的妇女使用了助产士，而得克萨斯州的妇女中有75％的人使用助产士，这一比例提高了整整50％。³此外，正如Lisette Mueller所表明的那样，助产士是欧洲移民妇女，尤其是德国移民妇女所推崇的职业。在德国，助产士的正规教育和职业标准已大大提高。虽然盎格鲁（当地出生的白人妇女），黑人和拉丁裔助产士在社区中受到很高的尊重，但他们的专业知识往往是通过学徒或经验获得的。在1930年代后期，弗雷德里克斯堡的分娩方式发生了变化，当时“年轻的基德医生”开设了一个带有产科病房的医院，在弗雷德里克斯堡和德克萨斯州的其他地方，许多（尽管不是全部）妇女选择了由医生接生。⁴在全国范围内，到20世纪中叶，美国医生在东北地区的共同努力削弱了美国助产士的地位。但是，正如Lisette Mueller和其他胜任的，专业的妇女所展示的那样，他们的论点常常与事实相矛盾。历史学家让·巴雷特·利托夫（Jean Barrett Litoff）指出：“在整个记录的历史中，助产士一直是妇女几乎独占的省。” ⁵分娩是一个“女性的奥秘”，只有女性才能了解它的复杂性。⁶结果，助产士“是最古老的女性职业，无疑是最重要的职业之一”，其技能是母亲和社区智慧型女性所传承的。⁷在北美，殖民时代的助产整个十九世纪的模型中发挥作用“社会分娩”，在其中的邻家妇女都来到了劳动妇女的家庭提供姐妹的支持，在分娩的母亲，以帮助[尾页414]的参加助产士，并通过观察学习如何生婴儿。⁸然而，早在18世纪末，医生就开始为白人上层阶级妇女分娩。⁹

只会说德语的穆勒（Mueller）在希尔（Hill Country）的德国社区中服务。随着美国城市白人妇女向分娩的方向发展，农村，少数族裔和移民妇女在分娩室中需要妇女以及来自其本国文化的妇女。¹⁰这些人口构成德克萨斯州妇女的很大一部分。得克萨斯州的移民妇女，德国人，捷克人，斯堪的纳维亚人和波兰人生活在“民族岛屿”中，这个名词是由...