Interesting "American Experience" on PBS tonight
Posted by Inko on January 19, 1998 at 16:53:08:
Our local PBS stations (WETA and MPT)are showing an "American Experience" program tonight from 9 p.m. - 10:30 p.m. It's called "A Midwife's Tale", the story of Martha Ballard, a healer who worked in the wilds of Maine battling disease and domestic abuse in the decades following the Revolutionary War. It is a dramatization of Ballard's diary (1785-1812) which became the basis of a Pullitzer Prize-winning book by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
My Wash. Post TV guide goes on to say: "Between 1785 and 1812, Ballard recorded her arduous work as a midwife (in 27 years she attended 816 births). By recording her statistics, she chronicled the medical history of Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Ulrich's portrait sheds light not only on the industrious and reticent Ballard, but also on the medical practices, religious squabbles and sexual mores of her time."
Sounds interesting, and in JA's time frame. Medical practices were probably pretty much the same in rural England and rural Maine!
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