Etherization in Childbirth

Portrait of Walter Channing (1786-1876), painted by William F. Draper copied from an original by Joseph Alexander Ames. Harvard University Portrait Collection, Gift of Mr. Walter Channing to the Harvard Medical School, October 1947

Channing_Etherization_title Page_001a.jpg

A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Title Page. Rare books RG732.C36, Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Page One. Rare books RG732.C36, Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Page 126. Rare books RG732.C36, Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Page 397. [Description of the first use of sulphuric ether in labor.] Rare books RG732.C36, Harvard Medical Library collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, 1848

By Walter Channing (1786–1876)

Dr. Channing was Professor of Midwifery and Medical Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Medical College. In 1832, he became a founder and chief physician of the Boston Lying-in Hospital, the first maternity hospital in New England—and an antecedent of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. This prominent and highly regarded obstetrician was the first in the US to publish on the subject of anesthesia in childbirth. In this book—his most influential work—Channing presented a statistical analysis of 581 cases of the use of ether and chloroform for the mitigation of pain during delivery. His positive evidence and advocacy reassured the public, and a heretofore unconvinced medical profession, that anesthesia was safe for mother and child.