How Did Ancient Humans Give Birth Without Hospitals?

How Did Ancient Humans Give Birth Without Hospitals? Today, in a rich country, birth is a hospital event — monitors, an anaesthetist down the hall, a blood bank on standby. For every human generation before roughly the last five, none of that existed. Birth happened at home, on a stool, in a room full of women, and it was one of the most dangerous things a person could do. In this video: Why human birth is uniquely hard, and why it's the reason humans almost always seek help giving birth The lifetime risk of dying in childbirth in most pre-modern populations: roughly one in ten The midwife, not the doctor: Meskhenet in Egypt, the Greek maia, the Roman obstetrix, Soranus of Ephesus's surviving handbook Why women gave birth upright — squatting, kneeling, on a birthing stool — and the 3,500-year-old decorated birth brick found at Abydos The herbs, amulets and prayers around a birth, and why that wasn't stupidity The Chamberlen family and their obstetric forceps, kept a family secret in a locked box for over a century The dark history of the caesarean section Ignaz Semmelweis, hand-washing, and the childbed fever he stopped — and was ridiculed for Anaesthesia, antibiotics, and how maternal death fell from a near-constant risk to a tiny fraction within about a century CHAPTERS 0:00 A hospital event 0:19 One of the most dangerous things a person could do 0:46 The centre of human life 1:31 Why humans need help giving birth 1:45 A human usually needs another human there 2:21 The midwife, not the doctor 3:03 The birth room was their territory 3:41 Why lying flat works against you 4:00 Upright birth and the Abydos birth brick 4:56 The dangerous first days 5:48 Ritual, herbs, and carrying the fear 6:09 The Chamberlens' secret forceps 6:42 The man-midwife arrives 7:22 The dark history of the caesarean 7:56 What was on the doctors' hands 8:17 After Semmelweis, the pieces came fast 8:44 Twilight sleep, and the swing back 9:09 A caesarean you walk away from 9:29 Where that care still isn't there 9:34 The delivery room is about 100 years old