What Is Florence Nightingale's Role In Midwifery?

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Before this class, I always thought nursing was a respectable and challenging profession. I know in today’s society, nurses are overworked and don’t really get the appreciation they deserve for their hard work. However, I never would have thought that in the 1800s, nursing was not even seen as a profession. Before learning of Florence Nightingale, we learned of a woman called Martha Ballard and her role in Midwifery. Later on, we learned about Florence Nightingale and her contributions to the nursing profession. Even though most of her contributions to the nursing profession were good, others were not so great. Her idea of a nurse as a middle class white woman only would affect the nursing profession for men and nonwhite women in the United States. The United States would also face a massive nurse shortage and the …show more content…

As important as Florence Nightingale was to Nursing, Martha Ballard was important to midwifery. Reading about midwifery was really eye opening. In my opinion, midwifery was the first profession that was practice by women. Midwifery was really important in the 1700’s when the United States was just starting as a nation. Women that practiced midwifery didn’t have any training, but they did have experience. This was the main reason why women preferred giving birth with the help of a midwife instead of a physician. Martha Ballard delivered about 700 babies and not only was she a midwife, she was also a healer. She would also prescribe folk medicine, nurse the sick, and even lay down the dead (Houlihan,1). However, as the time went by, midwives disappeared. New technology was being invented, for example the forceps. Childbirth was no longer a female-controlled practice. Childbirth practice was now being challenged by new scientific ideas that were promoted by young male physicians. By the 1800s, it was more common for male doctors to deliver babies. By then and so on, midwifery

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