Fertility Treatments in the late 1800s

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IggytheDestroyer

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I'm wondering if anyone might be able to help me find out what kind of options, if any, were available to couples who couldn't conceive back in the 1880's or so. Were there any advancements in reproductive medicine at this time or were childless people just out of luck?
 

Fern

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I would think the only help then would have been through taking potions of some kind or other, but haven't a clue where one would search to find more info.
 

EllenG

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fertility treatments...

Hi,
Well the woman might consult a midwife. I agree, she would probably be given a potion of some kind, made from herbs. There also were quack 'snake oil' salesmen who might promise a cure. A doctor might offer the suggestion of timing their intercourse to the woman's cycle.
 

PastMidnight

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In the earlier part of the 19th century, manuals advised women to have orgasms as a way to encourage conception, but manuals in the 1870s started taking the opposite view, telling women that if they orgasmed, they would be too weak to conceive. If the couple consulted a "marriage manual" like this from that period, they might think that she needed to avoid orgasms or anything that could bring on lustful feelings in order to conceive. If it was suspected that the male was impotent or was having problems performing, there were a variety of treatments. Electricity was used to help give a man an erection, special diets were prescribed, sometimes drugs were used (occasionally in an injection), or occasionally a measure such as circumcision was recommended. Most physicians by this time, though, seemed to realize that male impotence was a psychological problem, and generally had more effective treatments.

I couldn't find a source right at my fingertips, but I believe that they had a pretty good sense of how a woman's cycle worked by the 1880s. Although doctors were pretty wrapped up in prescribing medications and trying new-fangled techniques, a midwife might advise the couple to pay close attention to the woman's cycle and try to time intercourse accordingly, as EllenG suggested.

Now reading back over your post, I realize that you don't specify which country you are most concerned with.

My research is in 19th century America, and so in that area, a couple of books that I can recommend:

D’Emilio, John and Estelle B. Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.


Haller, John S. and Robin B. Haller. The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America. Urbana, Ill.: U of Illinois Press, 1974.
 

johnnysannie

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There were many childless couples in that time period and most of them were not childless by choice. There are centuries old folk remedies and potions that might have been used but medical science was not very advanced by our current standards. The brick Victorian home I grew up in had belonged to several generations of doctors and their medical books were stored in the attic. I occasionally read through some of them in my teens and don't recall any specific treatments for infertility. Sexuality - which would include reproduction - was often repressed and many women probably would not have been comfortable talking to an MD about such personal issues. A midwife might have provided some support and advice but I don't know how effective most of it would have been.
 

PattiTheWicked

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Medically, I'm not sure there would have been a lot of options. My grandmother, who is 91, remembers hearing from HER grandmother that if a woman hadn't gotten pregnant she "just wasn't trying hard enough."

Depending on the location and time of your story, folk magic might have been an option for women wishing to conceive. There are documented fertility rituals going back thousands of years. In Appalachian folklore, a woman who wanted to get pregnant might bury an egg in her hearth, drink a tea of red clover, carry a fertility stone, etc.

I've also read of, in Scotland and Wales, a woman crawling through a dolmen or cave known to bless hopeful mothers with a chance at conception. You also have your planting rituals, fire celebrations at Beltaine -- heck, the Maypole is one giant phallic symbol -- and even wedding traditions such as the throwing of rice and eating of cake with fertility associations.

If your story takes place in 1880, and is in a more rural area than an urban one, any of these might be a possibility.
 

Tish Davidson

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On the other hand, many more children were orphaned back then and often went to live with childless couples. My grandmother was born about 1880. Her mother died when she was very young, and her father walked out and left the 3 kids to manage on their own.Today, they would have arrested him for child endangerment, but back then neighbors took up a collection and sent the kids from Missouri back to Pennsylvania to live with different relatives. My grandmother lived with her childless aunt and uncle and became a daughter to them. Her brothers lived nearby with two other families that were distantly related and who already had kids. Although I doubt my grandmother was ever legally adopted by her aunt and uncle, they left her everything they had when they died. This sort of informal adoption was quite common, so failing to give birth to your own children did not necessarily mean that you would be childless.
 

IggytheDestroyer

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Wow. Thanks a lot, all of you.

I should have mentioned the setting of the story in the opening post. It is set in 1880's Liverpool, England.

I had been thinking more of the medical and scientific areas of this, and hadn't really considered the folk remedies and superstitious areas. Since the story involves a family of fishermen who are not really wealthy or educated, I might have to let the characters explore those possibilities as well, before turning to doctors of medicine.

It is really a small part of the overall story but is significant in the motivation of one of the characters. I know about modern fertility treatments since my wife and I had to go that route, ourselves, but I wanted to make sure that I didn't incorporate anything too modern into something that taakes place 120 years ago.

Thanks again. :)
 

ideagirl

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IggytheDestroyer said:
Since the story involves a family of fishermen who are not really wealthy or educated, I might have to let the characters explore those possibilities as well, before turning to doctors of medicine.

Since they're poor and uneducated, I would even question whether they would EVER turn to doctors of medicine. Given the lack of actual medical fertility treatments back then, I wonder if they would've even thought it was worth the trouble and expense. If you want them to eventually go to a doctor, it might be a good idea to at least cover this part of the problem in the story--that is, the dilemma of whether to go to the doctor or not and how to pay for it.
 

IggytheDestroyer

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ideagirl said:
Since they're poor and uneducated, I would even question whether they would EVER turn to doctors of medicine. Given the lack of actual medical fertility treatments back then, I wonder if they would've even thought it was worth the trouble and expense. If you want them to eventually go to a doctor, it might be a good idea to at least cover this part of the problem in the story--that is, the dilemma of whether to go to the doctor or not and how to pay for it.
Thanks. I do cover the trouble of it in the story. Being childless is making the wife more and more distant and depressed. Her husband believes he will lose her if they can't have a child and he decides the best alternative is to get help in trying toconceive. But they don't have enough money so he is drawn in by his bothers and their hair-brained idea to go to America in seach of gold. This is just at the beginning of the Alaska gold rush. Everything just goes to hell from there.
 

PastMidnight

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That's a good point. They might be more likely to consult a local midwife than a doctor in their situation. The midwife might be more educated and well-read, unless she is more old-school and has just learned through experience. By the 1880s, medical education was improving and the midwife may well have had either formal training or informal training through her own reading. If the childless woman asked around the village to the other women, she might get a lot of folk remedies or old wives' tales about how to conceive. An educated midwife would provide a contrast to this. She may give them a better idea of what their problem could be (medically speaking) and encourage them to seek out a doctor. This could help create their struggle over whether or not to sink the money into this.
 

PattiTheWicked

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If they're in 1880's Liverpool, and poor, a few things come to mind. One, a doctor wouldnt' really bother with them much -- doctors were for the wealthy. Even if he could save up enough money to see a doctor, there was a certain degree of class distinction at that time. A poor man who scrounges up some spare change is still a poor man.

Secondly, BECAUSE they're poor and uneducated, I think it would be far more beleivable for him to go visit the local cunning woman/herbalist/witch in the woods instead. Every town and village had women (and occasionally men) who had the knowledge of charms, remedies and spells good for what ailed you.

If you want to send him to America looking for gold, you might find another motivation for him besides gathering up money for fertility treatments -- I'm just not sure it would wash with readers for that time period.
 

arrowqueen

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Besides, by that time Liverpool was more a ship-building and trade port than a fishing port: slums, docks, street-walkers. etc. You'd be more likely to find a back-street abortionist than a wise-woman with fertility cures.

I suppose you could always write in a quack doctor who promises a cure, though. They've existed time out of mind.
 
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PastMidnight

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I'm not so sure that medical care would've been out of their reach just because they were poor. Charity hospitals were often found in large cities, especially in a port city with such a poor population as Liverpool.

I found this website in a quick search: http://www.btinternet.com/~m.royden/mrlhp/local/hospitals/hospitals.htm
It has some sources listed at the bottom as well. It seems that Liverpool has a history of having a maternity hospital or a women's hospital since the end of the 18th century, originally established as a Ladies' Charity hospital. Midwives and nurses were trained there, and doctors worked with the midwives to attend to women of all different backgrounds.

arrowqueen said:
You'd be more likely to find a back-street abortionist than a wise-woman with fertility cures.

This is what I'm thinking too, since it was a city.
 
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ideagirl

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PastMidnight said:
I'm not so sure that medical care would've been out of their reach just because they were poor. Charity hospitals were often found in large cities, especially in a port city with such a poor population as Liverpool.

Yes, but charity hospitals were for people who were sick, injured, or dying. Being unable to get pregnant is not an illness--even today it's not something that you'd go to the hospital for, it's a condition dealt with by gynecologists and fertility clinics; and back then, when there was no medical treatment for it whatsoever, it particularly wouldn't have been something that would take people to a hospital.

As for the ladies' hospital, those kinds of places were not hospitals for gynecological problems per se, they were just hospitals for women--you've got to remember how things were in the 19th century, the prospect of being in the hospital with men might have deterred women from going to the hospital at all because it seemed indecent or even dangerous. (To this day some Muslim countries have hospitals exclusively for women for roughly the same reason). Obviously, since it was a hospital for women, women with gynecological problems would've been there--but illnesses and injuries, like postpartum infections or tumors and so on. Not infertility.
 

DamaNegra

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Maybe this is out of context and everything, but a tribe in Africa deals with infertility this way:

They grab a snake and make it slither inside the woman's vagina. It goes in a long way before it is brought out again.

Curiously, this method has a sky-high chance for success.
 

IggytheDestroyer

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DamaNegra said:
Maybe this is out of context and everything, but a tribe in Africa deals with infertility this way:

They grab a snake and make it slither inside the woman's vagina. It goes in a long way before it is brought out again.

Curiously, this method has a sky-high chance for success.
HOLY CRAP!

Maybe I'll save that one for the next story. lol.
 
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