March 25, 2011

Books

Fetal Positions

Ourselves UnbornA History of the Fetus in Modern AmericaSara DubowOxford University Press, $29.95, 320 pp.

Leslie Woodcock Tentler

Americans living in the mid-nineteenth century knew almost nothing about the human fetus, at least in a biological sense. Prior to a mother’s perception of fetal movement, which occurs in the fourth or fifth month of gestation, the very existence of a pregnancy could not be definitively established. Despite the discovery of the mammalian egg in 1827 and the development of cel (...)


 

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