Eliza Taylor Ransom (May 31, 1863 – June 7, 1955) was a Canadian-born American physician who founded the first Twilight Sleep Hospital in the United States after studying the method of painless childbirth in Freiburg, Germany. From 1900 she was associated with Boston University, between 1917 and 1918 with the French Baby Fund, and from 1936 with the Boston Evening Clinic.[1]
Eliza Taylor Ransom | |
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| Born | Eliza Taylor May 31, 1863 Escott, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | June 7, 1955 (aged 92) Aberdeen, North Carolina, United States |
| Education | |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Spouse | George W. Ransom |
Career
editA neurologist and a homeopath, Ransom practiced medicine in Boston for forty years and was a part of a new generation of women physicians. As a fixture of the medical community in New England, she argued for women's right to a pain-free labor.[2] After studying the twilight sleep method in Freiburg, Germany, which involves administering a scopolamine-morphine injection, both a narcotic and an amnesiac, into an expecting mother so that they fall into a "twilight-sleep" state to reduce pain while giving birth. In 1914, she established the first twilight-sleep maternity hospital on Bay State Road in Boston, Massachusetts. In an article written by The New York Times in 1915, Ransom recommended that it should be required by federal law that anyone who administers scopolamine should only be able to do so with a special license or course of instruction.[3][4]
Ransom was a member of multiple medical societies throughout her life, including the Copley Society, Canadian Club of Boston, Boston University Women's Graduate Club, and Massachusetts Homeopathic Medical Society, by whom she was elected president in 1902.[2]
She also wrote many articles in medical journals on the subjects of mental and nervous diseases and of childbirth, including an article for The Washington Post on November 9, 1926, that summarizes the conditions face in a home birth as a plead to provide more precise scientific information for a home that is expecting a child.[1][5]
Ransom was also an active worker in the woman suffrage movement and a strong supporter of coeducation. In a special newspaper article published by The Washington Post in 1915, she believes that it is just as proper for a woman to court men as men do women.[6] Ransom also declared that it was to the mutual benefit of both genders to wear relatively less clothing to improve blood circulation and overall improve people's general health in a 1920 article titled "Says Both Sexes Wear Too Much Clothing", and that society should encourage friendships between men and women, as written in a 1923 article for the Boston Traveler.[7]
Personal life
editBorn in Escott, Ontario, on May 31, 1863, Eliza Taylor was the daughter of William G. and Janet Thomson Taylor and was one of four children.[3] She graduated from the Normal School, Oswego, New York, in 1888 and Boston University School of Medicine in 1900, along with postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins University.[1]
Her husband George W. Ransom was a prominent educator, best known in Boston during his lifetime as the master of the Abraham Lincoln School and for organizing the first civics classes in Boston settlement houses in the early twentieth century. They had two daughters.[1]
Eliza Taylor Ransom died on June 7, 1955, in Aberdeen, North Carolina, at the age of 92.[1][8]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e "Papers of Eliza Taylor Ransom, 1888–1955". Harvard Library. Retrieved July 11, 2023.
- ^ a b Kirschmann, Anne Taylor (2004). A Vital Force: Women in American Homeopathy. pp. 49–50. ISBN 9780813533209.
- ^ a b "Dr. Eliza Taylor Ransom". New England Journal of Medicine. 253 (2): 82. 1955. doi:10.1056/NEJM195507142530218. Retrieved July 11, 2023 – via Google Books.
- ^ Leavitt, Judith Walzer (1980). "Birthing and Anesthesia: The Debate over Twilight Sleep". Signs. 6 (1): 147–164. doi:10.1086/493783. JSTOR 3173972. PMID 21213656. S2CID 143270848.
- ^ "Plan Baby's Days on Simple Basis, Urges Noted Authority". The Washington Post. November 9, 1926. p. 11. Retrieved July 11, 2023 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ "Why Not Let Women Do Courting? Dr. Eliza Taylor Ransom Asks Men: 'They Have Never Had a Chance to Be Natural,' Boston Physician Says – Thinks They Should Be Able to Pick Their Friends Among Both Sexes – Should Even Be Allowed to Propose". The Washington Post. Boston (published May 16, 1915). May 15, 1915. p. 17. ProQuest 145350378. Retrieved July 11, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Zimmerman, Edith (June 2, 2011). "Did the Students of 1898 Spoon?". The Hairpin. Retrieved July 11, 2023 – via Medium.
- ^ "Dr. Eliza Ransom: 'Twilight Sleep' Pioneer, Aged 92". The Boston Globe. June 8, 1955. p. 22. Retrieved July 11, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.