ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The “Abnormal” Pelvis: Pelvimetry and Forceps Use and Design in the British Empire from the late 19th century to the early 20th century

• In Event: Disability Sciencing: Measuring and Classification at Sites of Knowledge-Making

English Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, the desire to prove that racial and gender differences were measurable anatomical quantities overwhelmed the medical psyche of the British Empire. Childbirth was no exception. Pelvimetry, the measurement of the female pelvis, presumably offered a method not only to measure racial differences among pregnant women but also to assess birth capacity. The female pelvis, its shape and measurements, became key criteria for forceps delivery as the profession of obstetrics emerged in the late nineteenth century. Pelvimetry became a tool to rationalize forceps use on pelvises deemed too small, defective, fragile, and abnormal for unassisted vaginal delivery. This medical deconstruction of the maternal body racialized, gendered, and disabled a woman’s birth capacity. This paper will investigate obstetrical knowledge regarding the maternal pelvis and the forceps in British-controlled Southern Africa and British Bengal from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It analyzes medical journals, forceps designs, lecture notes, medical curricula, trade catalogues, and medical reports to uncover how obstetricians unevenly connected pelvic shape to birth capacity and forceps delivery. The decision-making process for forceps use relied on fluid, plural, and often contrasting ideas of the maternal body. Invention and modifications to the forceps enhanced function and efficiency for the physician, while bolstering and promoting the measurement and classification of the “abnormal” maternal pelvis. Forceps design and use offer an unexplored lens into how mobile imperial physicians modified, challenged, reinforced, and practically applied these highly gendered and racialized pelvic typologies onto laboring women in colonized regions.

Author

• Corinne Freeth, University of Delaware