BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

Well into the twentieth century, modern medicine reached very few people in China, and
modern childbirth was even rarer. The number of Chinese who accessed, or had access to,
modern medicine during this period was infinitesimal. In 1910 there were fewer than 500
modern physicians in China to serve a population of roughly 500 million. 59 Modern medicine
was focused primarily in treaty ports, but there were a few inland cities where medical
missionaries had settled and built hospitals and dispensaries, such as Xiangya Medical School
and Hospital in Changsha, Hunan province. Furthermore, medicalization of childbirth was only
beginning to take place in the West in the early twentieth century, and so the ideas of hospital
births and antenatal (prenatal) care were not widespread or even considered necessary.
Specialized and systematic midwifery training did not commence until the late 1920s with the
advent of a modern public health system and greater importance placed on maternal and child
health.
PUBLIC HEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE
Modern obstetrics in China closely followed its development in the United States and Europe. In
the early stages, the very rich and the indigent alike received the most up-to-date obstetrics care.
In the late eighteenth century, middle and upper class women began to ask male physicians into
their homes to assist with parturition and childbirth. At the same time, doctors established
charity hospitals to aid the poor and gain experience. Therefore, some very poor women and
new immigrants got similar treatment in hospitals as the rich women did in their homes, though
in the 1700s only about five percent of parturient women used these hospitals. 60 The growth of
Western-trained midwives and obstetricians closely followed in China, as most medical
59
China Medical Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation, Medicine in China (New York: Rockefeller
Foundation, 1914).
60
Leavitt and Numbers, eds., Sickness & Health in America.
36