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Lost: Miscarriage in Nineteenth-Century America
2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
In Lost , medical historian Shannon Withycombe weaves together women’s personal writings and doctors’ publications from the 1820s through the 1910s to investigate the transformative changes in how Americans conceptualized pregnancy, understood miscarriage, and interpreted fetal tissue over the course of the nineteenth century. Withycombe’s pathbreaking research reveals how Americans construed, and continue to understand, miscarriage within a context of reproductive desires, expectations, and abilities. This is the first book to utilize women’s own writings about miscarriage to explore the individual understandings of pregnancy loss and the multiple social and medical forces that helped to shape those perceptions. What emerges from Withycombe’s work is unlike most medicalization narratives.
In Lost , medical historian Shannon Withycombe weaves together women’s personal writings and doctors’ publications from the 1820s through the 1910s to investigate the transformative changes in how Americans conceptualized pregnancy, understood miscarriage, and interpreted fetal tissue over the course of the nineteenth century. Withycombe’s pathbreaking research reveals how Americans construed, and continue to understand, miscarriage within a context of reproductive desires, expectations, and abilities. This is the first book to utilize women’s own writings about miscarriage to explore the individual understandings of pregnancy loss and the multiple social and medical forces that helped to shape those perceptions. What emerges from Withycombe’s work is unlike most medicalization narratives.
236 pages, Paperback
Published October 5, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 8, 2020
Wow! What an absolutely fascinating book this is. I'll buy a copy for my niece, who is a midwife.
This book was thoroughly researched, shedding light on a topic, you even in this time and day don't hear a lot about.
It shows how women felt about, and dealt with, miscarriage in the 19th Century.
We (women) have come a long way since, but not enough. Doctors here (Germany) still have a firm grip on all things birth related, and you are discouraged when you want to give birth at home.
Although we profit from the advanced medical knowledge about pregnancies, I was horrified to hear how doctors got their knowledge.
Before listening to this book, I had never given any thought to what happened to the results of miscarriages -- now I know, and it makes me want to vomit. I am sorry for all the powerless women of the previous centuries, but as far as pregnancy and giving birth is concerned, we have to admit that we still don't have any power.
But I digress. This book should be mandatory reading for every midwife pupil, just so they know where they come from, and what they can expect to have to contend with if working in a clinic, and not as a free midwife.
The narration was absolutely perfect, Ginger White had a perfect pitch and pace for this -- in parts gruesome -- tale of a sensitive topic which concerns so many women the world over.
I'm impressed with the book, and saddened that women are still being judged for their feelings, and decisions.
This was 7.5 hours well spent -- although I couldn't listen to the book in one go, I had to take breaks from gnashing my teeth in anger, and from the horrors described -- which, at the time, were perfectly normal.
Read the book, or, even better, listen to it.
This book was thoroughly researched, shedding light on a topic, you even in this time and day don't hear a lot about.
It shows how women felt about, and dealt with, miscarriage in the 19th Century.
We (women) have come a long way since, but not enough. Doctors here (Germany) still have a firm grip on all things birth related, and you are discouraged when you want to give birth at home.
Although we profit from the advanced medical knowledge about pregnancies, I was horrified to hear how doctors got their knowledge.
Before listening to this book, I had never given any thought to what happened to the results of miscarriages -- now I know, and it makes me want to vomit. I am sorry for all the powerless women of the previous centuries, but as far as pregnancy and giving birth is concerned, we have to admit that we still don't have any power.
But I digress. This book should be mandatory reading for every midwife pupil, just so they know where they come from, and what they can expect to have to contend with if working in a clinic, and not as a free midwife.
The narration was absolutely perfect, Ginger White had a perfect pitch and pace for this -- in parts gruesome -- tale of a sensitive topic which concerns so many women the world over.
I'm impressed with the book, and saddened that women are still being judged for their feelings, and decisions.
This was 7.5 hours well spent -- although I couldn't listen to the book in one go, I had to take breaks from gnashing my teeth in anger, and from the horrors described -- which, at the time, were perfectly normal.
Read the book, or, even better, listen to it.
October 27, 2025
I LOVED this book! It was so well written and blended medical history with women's history expertly. The way she used anecdotes to make the history personal through these women's lives. Also their diversity of experiences was incredible! I also enjoyed the way she questioned the assumption of grief around miscarriage and used that to discuss reproductive freedom, it made for a phenomenal connection to the present. Overall, I think this is a must read even outside of the history field.
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April 23, 2019Fascinating book, about the shift in the discussion surrounding miscarriage - from a private (at home) event, often a relief, to one medicalized, depersonalized and steeped in loss.
In part, the medicalization occurred because "attending a miscarriage proved to be the most viable path to obtaining fetal tissues" - meaning, a source for research material - what's in that blob anyway?
It's definitely got the whiff of academia about it - with writing like "this chapter will investigate why" and "in so doing, it will uncover" and "I hope to reveal that". That said, it's actually quite engagingly and accessibly written.
Overall, though, it's a really interesting lens into pregnancy and loss from the late 18th century to about the dawn of the 20th.
"On the surface, the argument presented by eighteenth-century physicians to explain miscarriage should not sound all that foreign to our modern ears: miscarriage is the natural bodily process of getting rid of a pregnancy that is not normal or healthy....But in the 18th century it was not so much that the pregnancy had gone awry; but rather that the pregnancy had not even commenced in the first place, because a true conception had never occurred...described a wide and fascinating array of objects that a womb could house and subsequently should expel."
There's also discussion of the taboos around discussion. "While we may be in a new age of miscarriage openess, so far the most appropriate miscarriage discussion is one that revolves around loss, sadness, and grief. Women...who might feel ambivalent or even relief at a miscarriage, may still be criticized, perpetrating the silence around pregnancy loss."
In part, the medicalization occurred because "attending a miscarriage proved to be the most viable path to obtaining fetal tissues" - meaning, a source for research material - what's in that blob anyway?
It's definitely got the whiff of academia about it - with writing like "this chapter will investigate why" and "in so doing, it will uncover" and "I hope to reveal that". That said, it's actually quite engagingly and accessibly written.
Overall, though, it's a really interesting lens into pregnancy and loss from the late 18th century to about the dawn of the 20th.
"On the surface, the argument presented by eighteenth-century physicians to explain miscarriage should not sound all that foreign to our modern ears: miscarriage is the natural bodily process of getting rid of a pregnancy that is not normal or healthy....But in the 18th century it was not so much that the pregnancy had gone awry; but rather that the pregnancy had not even commenced in the first place, because a true conception had never occurred...described a wide and fascinating array of objects that a womb could house and subsequently should expel."
There's also discussion of the taboos around discussion. "While we may be in a new age of miscarriage openess, so far the most appropriate miscarriage discussion is one that revolves around loss, sadness, and grief. Women...who might feel ambivalent or even relief at a miscarriage, may still be criticized, perpetrating the silence around pregnancy loss."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews