Medicine: Childbirth: Nature v. Drugs

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Most physicians concede that childbirth is the most painful experience endured by human beings. Yet last week's A. M. A. discussions on the alleviation of that physical agony were largely academic for the practical reason that two out of three normal births in the U. S: today are accomplished without any form of pain-killer for the mother. Because the great majority of women bear this natural ordeal bravely, they have made no concerted demand for relief in childbed nor have more than a handful of pioneer doctors attempted to give them any. After last week's debate a fair-minded physician would probably come to the following conclusions: 1) Semi-narcosis is still a perfectly reasonable, safe and feasible obstetric help, provided the doctor knows how and when to administer the necessary drugs; 2) Most doctors are ignorant of the uses and possible after-effects of childbed analgesics. Dr. Joseph Bolivar DeLee, 66, ranks as No. 1 U. S. obstetrician because he founded Chicago's great Lying-in Hospital, helped make obstetrics a learned and respected profession, demonstrated methods to prevent women from dying in childbirth.

Dr. DeLee (originally d'Lee) founded Chicago's Lying-in Hospital in 1895 when Chicago's poor mothers could get no decent midwifery, when he was abysmally poor and four years out of Chicago Medical College (now part of Northwestern University). After the Women's Christian Temperance Union had ignored him, he turned to Chicago Jews who gave him a total of $500. A Christian doctor gave him a stove, a table, some chairs and an old carpet. His family supplied linen. From a second-hand store he got two beds. With that he started Chicago's first maternity dispensary in a $12-a-month flat in a Ghetto tenement. "Constant poverty threatened to close the place," reminisced Dr. DeLee, who later charged $2,000 to $3,000 for a delivery, in Kansas City last week. "On one occasion 13¢ and half a loaf of stale bread represented the floating assets of the institution. I went home and borrowed $10 from my father."

At the turn of the Century Frederic Adrian Delano, uncle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, gave Dr. DeLee's pinched institution a big fillip by taking an interest that has never flagged. Dr. DeLee subsequently delivered four of Mr. Delano's grandchildren. Other high-born "DeLee babies": Alice Roosevelt Longworth's Paulina; Ruth Hanna McCormick's (Simms's) Katrina, Medill, Ruth. Such clientele helped Dr. DeLee prosper personally to such an extent that he could give Lying-in Hospital his check for $55,000 during a money-raising campaign. The Hospital is now affiliated with the University of Chicago. Dr. DeLee's dream is to have associated hospitals affiliated with Chicago's other great medical schools, Northwestern and Illinois, with Dr. Joseph Bolivar DeLee grand chief obstetrician for all Chicago.