"The Experimentation of the Cesarean Section in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil"
By: Isabela Dornelas, Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil)
Brazil has the second-highest rate of cesarean section in the world. The surgery today considered to be overused in the country was not always a safe obstetric practice. Until the 1950s, the cesarean section was a dangerous resource, and it has killed and mutilated women over the years.
To investigate the past of cesarean section is also to explore how Brazilian obstetricians used the experimentation as a strategy. The most renowned obstetricians of the country Dr. Fernando Magalhães (1878 - 1945), Dr. Hugo Werneck (1878 - 1935), and Dr. Raul Briquet (1887-1953), were professors and directors of different philanthropic maternity hospitals where the procedures happened and where women of color and the disenfranchised ones sought for assistance in childbirth.
The discussion about the experimentation of techniques and the appropriation of hygienist and eugenicist ideas is mandatory to elucidate the historical paths of bioethical issues involved in the cesarean section's technical development in Brazil. The paper is a work in progress that will focus on the argument that Brazil's poverty and racial tension provided the human resources for establishing the C-section as an experimental technique to expand obstetrical knowledge and improve the surgical procedure.
Isabela Dornelas is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. She holds a scholarship from the Minas Gerais Research Foundation and was recently awarded the best dissertation prize conferred by the Brazilian Society of History of Science. Her current research interests are technical experimentation, History of intervention in childbirth during the XIX and XX centuries.
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