High on Childbirth

“Heroin. The sedative for coughs” Bayer advertisement from the late 1800s

 

When I was pregnant with my first child I spent a lot of time considering the pain I was about to experience during childbirth.  I was determined to have a plan - just like the childbirth books told me I must have.  I was quite sure that with determination I would need no more than a TENS machine and positive thinking. Ha. Totally didn't work.

During one visit to my Obstetrician I explained that I had this well thought out plan.  He looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and said you know the best possible treatment for pain in childbirth is a dose of Heroin.

Excuse me?

Oh yes, he continued, after it was made illegal to produce Heroin for medicinal purposes in Australia we stockpiled it [at this hospital] and only ran out in the late 1980s. 

Apparently doctors in Britain can still prescribe Heroin (as the drug Diamorphine) in cases of extreme pain – usually patients experiencing trauma, cancer ... or childbirth.

Heroin, along with other drugs now classed as illegal narcotics such as cocoa leaf and marijuana, were common ingredients in many medicines  and ‘tonics’ at the turn of the 20th century, even those targeted at babies and toddlers.

We are a drug-taking society – be it coffee, nicotine, alcohol, prescribed drugs, illicit drugs or chocolate.  The artificial stimulation of the senses occupies a part of many of our days. Now I’m not about to call for the legalisation of cocaine-based teething solutions for babies or heroin-based cough mixture but it did make me wonder what drugs we freely take today that in fifty years time will be deemed illegal or, at least, shocking?

Don't you wish you had staff?

"The Housemaid's folding back her window-shutters at eight o'clock the next day, was the sound which first roused Catherine...her fire was already burning."  from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, Chapter VII.

While chatting last week it struck Alison and I that if we had lived in Jane Austen's England we wouldn't have to do the washing, or the ironing, or prepare any meals.  In fact it is likely that the most energetic task in our diaries for the day would be a brisk walk in the countryside, possibly accompanied by a large hunting dog.

Sure, we wouldn't have been able to inherit property but as I face a large pile of ironing, an ever-growing pile of laundry and decisions about what to cook for dinner I wonder how far we women have really come in the last 200 years.

Even Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in their straightened circumstances were able to afford a cook and a male servant when kicked out of the family home.

So where have we gone wrong? 

I'd be more than happy to put up with the hassle of having to 'dress' for dinner if only someone else would cook it for me.  And as for having to rise at eight to the sound of someone opening the shutters and the cackle of a newly lit fire ... I guess I could get used to it.