Twilight sleep (English translation of the German word Dämmerschlaf) is an amnesic condition characterized by insensitivity to pain without loss of consciousness, induced by an injection of morphine and scopolamine, especially to relieve the pain of childbirth.
In 1899, a Dr. Schneiderlin recommended the use of hyoscine and morphine for surgical anaesthesia and it started to be used for purpose, sporadically. The use of this combination to ease birth, was first proposed by Richard von Steinbuchel in 1902 then was picked up and further developed by Carl Gauss in Freiburg, Germany starting in 1903. The method came to be known as "Dämmerschlaf" ("twilight sleep") or the "Freiburg method". It spread rather slowly, and different clinics experimented with different dosages and ingredients; in 1915 The Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that "the method [was] really still in a state of development".
In 1915, the New York Times published an article on twilight sleep and the work of Hanna Rion, or Mrs. Frank Ver Beck, who had recently written a book entitled The Truth About Twilight Sleep. In that article, Rion said that the consensus of 69 medical reports she had looked at said that "scopolamin-morphin is without danger to the child".
It was initially heralded as the dawning of "a new era for woman and through her for the whole human race", and early feminists in the US formed the National Twilight Sleep Association, which advocated for wider use; articles appeared in The New York Times, The Ladies' Home Journal, and Reader's Digest praising it. The campaign dwindled after one of its leaders died of hemorrhage giving birth.
The drug combination did not relieve pain; but it did create amnesia such that the woman giving birth didn't remember the pain.
It remained widely used in the US until the 1960s, when growing chemophobia and a desire for more natural childbirth led to its abandonment.
Video Twilight sleep
See also
- A.C.E. mixture
- Anesthesia
- Neuroleptanalgesic
Maps Twilight sleep
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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