Midwifery and Medicine in Boston: Walter Channing, M.D., 1786-1876

Abstract

Midwifery and Medicine in Boston: Walter Channing, M.D., 1786-1876. By Amalie M. Kass. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002. Pp. xv, 386. Illustrations, chronology. Cloth, $40.00.)Medical men in the early republic faced the challenges of defining themselves within a complex environment. They were expected to combine European training with commitment to their country, a high level of manual skill with the manners and address of a gentleman born. If their specialty was midwifery, they needed another unlikely combination: a talent for pleasing ladies while maintaining a resolutely asexual professional persona. Amalie Kass's biography of Walter Channing (1786-1876) is a sensitive account of the way Channing negotiated these challenges, as well as his sometimes-difficult personal life, becoming a leading member of the Harvard Medical Faculty and the Boston medical establishment.The prologue and first chapter chart Channing's childhood into a well-respected professional family with Revolutionary War credentials. Though clearly among the Boston elite, the Channings were not wealthy, and young Walter was expected to earn his living. He chose medicine and, as Kass explains in chapter two, followed a typical course of study for a young man of his generation and background: apprenticeship to a leading Boston physician, followed by study first in Philadelphia and then in Edinburgh and London. Supportive family members provided the loan that made such an extended course of study possible, and Channing repaid his debt by returning an accomplished, sought-after young physician. Chapter three describes the steps attendant on beginning medical practice, involving talents & industry, aided by powerful friends (44) as one correspondent aptly put it. Channing attended family and his wide circle of family friends, volunteered for medical charities, joined medical and scientific societies, and was appointed to the medical faculty of Harvard. His marriage at the age of twenty-nine was another sign of his success; sadly, his wife died young, leaving him a widow with four small children.The next three chapters deal with Channing's practice and teaching. Kass bases chapter four, Obstetrical Practice, on Channing's papers, augmented with other contemporary obstetrical works. They show Channing to be careful, if not innovative, thoroughly mindful of the authority he wielded as physician. Chapter five discusses Channing's long and fruitful association with both the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Lying-in Hospital. Chapter six discusses Channing's teaching of both midwifery and medical jurisprudence. Channing's forty years' commitment to Harvard ensured his influence over the next generation of medical men.The next four chapters depict the range of Channing's activities as a mature, accomplished physician. Chapter seven discusses the changes in antebellum Boston and in Channing's own life, as he married again and, sadly, lost his second wife in childbirth, surely an especially heavy blow to an obstetrician. This was a period of rapid change in obstetrical practice, and in chapters eight and nine, Kass analyzes Channing's favorable response to Oliver Wendell Holmes's essay on puerperal fever and James Young Simpson's use of anaesthetic. …