Josephine Scott
Josephine Scott was an American woman, living in Philadelphia, who died tragically due to inadequate medical care, during and after trying to give birth, in 1974.[1] Modern commentators are highly critical of the medical care provided by William H. Parish.[2]
Scott had been born with dwarfism in Georgia, in 1849.[2] She grew up with ricketts. She had tried to give birth before Parish was called to her home.
In an article about the unequal medical treatment black mothers continue to receive to this day the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Parish's highly colored comments about the house where she lived, and her intelligence, writing “Her stupidity was such that no satisfactory history of herself could be given.”[2]
Parish did not attempt to delivery her baby via a Caesearian Section. Nor did he take her to the Philadelphia Hospital, two blocks away. After she died of sepsis, four weeks later, Parish acquired her body, dissected her, published a detailed account of her pelvic anatomy, and donated her pelvic bones to the Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia.[2]
An 1875 account of her case noted that she had undergone craniotomy operations, during earlier attempts to give birth.[1] Although the paper says the craniotomy, which usually means an operation to surgically remove part of the skull, was administered to her, in this case it refers to crushing her babies' skulls, with forceps, so the then dead children could be dragged through her birth canal, which was extremely narrow due to her childhood ricketts.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Joseph Taber Johnson (May 1875). "On some of the apparent peculiarities of parturition in the Negro race, with remarks on race pelves in general". Journal of Obstetrics. https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/pdf/nlm:nlmuid-101664828-bk. Retrieved 2022-10-28.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Layla A. Jones (2022-07-12). "When the water breaks:America’s maternal mortality crisis traces back to Philadelphia, home to the nation’s first delivery wards. From the start, Black people received unequal treatment and were exploited for science". Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on 2022-10-01. https://web.archive.org/web/20221012135931/https://www.inquirer.com/news/inq2/more-perfect-union-maternal-morbidity-philadelphia-medicine-history-racism-20220712.html. Retrieved 2022-10-28. "Sheela Athreya, an anthropologist who began her Ph.D. at Penn, feels similarly about museums like the one that inherited Scott’s pelvis."
