ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complex social and intellectual context in which antenatal care was conceived and debated, as well as the large network of people, institutions and skills that contributed to its development. The making of antenatal care as part of the new state medicine in Britain followed a broad political consensus that the medical supervision of pregnant women would improve the health of the population as a whole. This chapter explores the history of pre-maternity practice and its various meanings at two Edinburgh institutions: the Royal Maternity Hospital (RMH) and the Lauriston Home for unmarried mothers. The municipal maternal and child welfare and VD schemes in Edinburgh marked the emergence of new institutional and political structures which made the systematic provision of antenatal clinics a key objective of a reformed public health. Teratology, temperance and antenatal hygiene were pivotally important for providing a framework in which antenatal care could enter public discourse around World War I.
