ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the promises of the new physician-directed obstetrics—beginning in the 1760s, when physicians entered obstetrics, and ending in the 1940s, after they dominated the field—and evaluates the extent to which those promises were kept. The entrance of physician-accoucheurs into the practice of obstetrics in America during the second half of the eighteenth century marked the first significant break with tradition. Many of the physicians who practiced obstetrics at the turn of the nineteenth century had trained in Great Britain, where a tradition of male accoucheurs had already developed. The promise of the new obstetrics developed in part through formal physician education in midwifery. Early obstetric "science" provided knowledge and wherewithal, but the principles of the practical application remained at the bedside in the hands of individual, isolated doctors. Physicians' reports of their obstetric practices in the second half of the nineteenth century indicate that use of anesthesia did not necessarily lead to increased forceps use.
