p2404 -
From 'milk leg' to blood clotting: the importance of women in the development of early clotting theories, 1773-1822
Friday, June 2, 2017: 1:45 PM
RSVLT 106 (Hofstra University)
Eighteenth and nineteenth century physicians observed that swollen legs were common in lying-in women. Reasoning that stasis of breast milk in the legs caused the swelling, physicians dubbed the condition ‘milk leg.’ Lying-in records and works by Charles White (1728-1812) best exemplify how inflammation was understood as milk leg, and how it came to be understood pathologically as blood clotting.[1] Primary sources such as journals and letters written by women also reveal the pivotal role that women and their bodies played in developing early blood clotting theories. A serious look at early research on blood clotting would expand and revise the history of pathology by bringing the direct and indirect contributions of women to bear on the issue. Thus, I hope to show that women and their bodies were both influential and necessary in the development of theories about blood clots and the clot’s relationship to ‘secretions’ (later identifiable as hormones), and the ramifications those connections have for promoting awareness about women’s health, then and now.
[1] Charles White, A Treatise on the Management of Pregnant and Lying-in Women, and the Means of Curing, but More Especially of Preventing the Principal Disorders to Which They Are Liable. Together with Some New Directions Concerning the Delivery of the Child and Placenta in Natural Births. Illustrated with Cases. By Charles White, F.R.S. Member of the Corporation of Surgeons in London, and Surgeon to the Manchester Infirmary (London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly, in the Poultry, 1773).