Grantly Dick-Read

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Grantly Dick Read (born January 26, 1890 in Beccles , Norfolk , † June 11, 1959 in Wroxham , Norfolk) was an English gynecologist who campaigned for natural childbirth .

Life

Cape Helles Field Hospital

He was born as the eighth child of a wealthy miller in a small eastern English country town. He studied at Cambridge and completed his medical training at the London Hospital in Whitechapel. During the First World War he was badly wounded in the Battle of Gallipoli . After his recovery he worked as a medical officer in France . As a resident doctor and obstetrician , he practiced in England and sub-Saharan Africa. Dick-Read was married twice. He spent his last years in the south of England at Petersfield.

plant

development

Shortly before the First World War, Dick-Read, as a resident in the surgical department of the City of London Hospital, first thought that it should be possible to relieve the pain of women in labor by other means than narcotics . After the First World War as a military doctor, he gave up surgery completely. He becomes an obstetrician at London Hospital and later sets up a private practice on Harley Street . In the 1920s, Dick-Read had a key experience in obstetrics when a woman wanted to avoid the administration of chloroform in order to be able to consciously witness her birth. This birth went off without any problems. He keeps a record of every further delivery and collects mountains of notes.

After further investigation, Dick-Read finally published his book The Natural Birth in 1933 . The book brought him to the brink of ruin. Patients left him, colleagues attacked him and even friends moved away from him. However, his book became a bestseller in the following years. He later opened his own clinic in Woking near London and took doctors on as partners. With the growing success of his clinic, his opponents, together with their own partners, subsequently brought proceedings against the British medical organization for illegal behavior. The procedure collapsed on all points. The plaintiffs had to pay £ 3,000 in compensation for pain and suffering and apologize in a circular to 4,000 patients.

His second book, Childbirth Without Fear. The Principles And Practice Of Natural Childbirth was published in 1942. He wrote it specifically for expectant mothers and not for colleagues. In it he writes, In no other animal species is the process of birth apparently associated with any suffering, pain or agony, except where pathology exists or in an unnatural state, such as captivity. Translated: In no other animal species is the birth process obviously associated with suffering, pain or agony, unless there are diseases or, in an unnatural case, such as captivity. The Bible verse: “God said to the woman: I will greatly increase the toil of your pregnancy , you shall bear children with pain ! […] ”- ( Genesis 3,16  ELB ), described Dick-Read as“ medieval atrocity propaganda ”.

In 1948 he went to South Africa and continued his work in a Johannesburg practice. In the Belgian Congo, Dick-Read made the discovery that the process of birth can be influenced by the mind. Painful labor is considered a punishment for adultery by many tribes. He observed women writhing in pain for days, but giving birth almost immediately after confessing their wrongdoing to the medicine man . He stayed in Africa until 1953, where he found confirmation of his doctrine of natural birth. After returning to England, he invited prominent doctors, midwives and journalists to a London cinema. The film showed four of his patients in the final phase of natural childbirth. This film was the first documentary evidence of his theory.

Teaching

According to Dick-Read's teaching, fear and ignorance are the worst enemies of natural childbirth. That is why the woman should not stumble into something unknown to her as a passive victim. She must be drawn to active cooperation in all phases of the birth. In his view, childbirth is not pain but work. The women should know their job. You have learned to understand and use nature's intentions instead of resisting. In a normal birth, it is not the pain in labor that affects the state of mind of the woman, but, conversely, the state of mind that triggers the pain. Women should understand childbirth as their personal achievement. His claim: there is no pain in childbirth, or rather, there shouldn't be. He replaced the term labor pain with muscle feeling .

Dick-Read developed the system of prenatal psycho prophylaxis, later named after him by Read's method . The pains in childbirth are reduced by influencing the mother-to-be, both mentally and physically. Influencing can take place through systematic gymnastic relaxation and loosening exercises, education and instruction about the birth process or elimination of the fear of childbirth, which leads to cramps and pain.

According to Dick-Read's theory, much of the fear and pain arises from pre-natal expectations. He called this phenomenon fear-tension-pain syndrome . Dick-Read did not reject pain medication as a matter of principle, as fears cannot always be relieved. Dick-Read also considered the father's role in childbirth for the first time.

Public attention

Dick-Read criticized modern obstetrics as an art of anesthesia in which the anesthetist plays a bigger role than the midwife . Many colleagues were hostile to Dick-Read. He was attacked in the British Medical Journal . In public discussions, skeptical colleagues accused him: If he wanted to be successful, he would have to transplant modern women back into the jungle. Because Dick-Read kept claiming that in Africa he had found confirmation of his theory that birth pain was nothing more than a disease of civilization. The fact that a normal physiological birth is transformed into a pathological condition with its risks almost cost him his practice in the 1930s.

In 1950, Dick-Read's book Mother Becoming Without Pain, The Natural Birth, was first published in German. In the coming years this book was published in 12th editions in Germany alone and it was translated into 14 other languages. Also in some maternity clinics in the GDR , u. a. in Berlin at the Charité and in Leipzig, the method was introduced by Dick-Read and was popular here under the name of birth pain relief.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s his ideas were heard in the United States and Western Europe. In front of doctors and gynecologists from numerous European and overseas countries in Rome, Pope Pius XII spoke on January 8, 1956 . on the problem of painless childbirth and the Dick-Read method. The Pope said: If the new technology saves and alleviates the pain of childbirth, Christian obstetrics can accept it without hesitation . The Pope turned against antiquated interpretations of Church teachings. He would like to see a strengthening of the awareness of the greatness of motherhood in general and especially of the hour when the mother brings the child into the world. Pius XII. received Dick-Read in a private audience and honored his services with a silver medal.

In 1956 the Natural Childbirth Association, now the National Childbirth Trust, was founded, of which Dick-Read became its first president. Dick-Read could not run for the Nobel Prize in Medicine , which the University of Johannesburg wanted to propose, because the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists refused to approve. In 1992 a plaque was put up in his former practice on Harley Street.

Impact of his work in the present

The Dick-Read method was a milestone on the way to natural birth and tried for the first time to break the cycle of fear, tension and pain and to avoid pain relief with medication. The women should be prepared for the birth through information, emotional support from their partners or obstetricians present, as well as breathing and relaxation exercises . This includes knowing how contractions affect different parts of the body. The women giving birth are very consciously involved in the experience of labor pain and can accept and endure it as such. The birth can thus be a positive experience for a woman. Almost all modern birth methods are based on these findings. In today's birth preparation courses , the future parents are trained on the upcoming delivery, etc. a. through breathing exercises, attuned and prepared.

literature

  • Grantly Dick-Read: Becoming a mother without pain. The natural birth. ; ISBN 3-455-01451-8 .
  • Grantly Dick-Read: Childbirth without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth , Pinter & Martin 2004, ISBN 978-0-9530964-6-6 .
  • Thomas A. Noyes: Doctor Courageous: The story of Dr Grantly Dick Read 1957.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birth is Work DER SPIEGEL, June 1, 1955
  2. ↑ Birth is Work DER SPIEGEL, June 1, 1955
  3. ^ Dick-Read, G .: Becoming a mother without pain. The natural birth , Hoffmann and Campe, 12th edition, Hamburg 1963
  4. ↑ Stiefel, A .; Geist, C .; Harder, U .: Midwifery. Textbook for pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum and work. 5th edition, Hippokrates Verlag, Stuttgart 2013; ISBN 978-3-8304-5493-9
  5. ↑ Birth is Work DER SPIEGEL, June 1, 1955
  6. ↑ Hellmann, R .: FROM THEORY AND PRACTICE OF NATURAL BIRTH . In becoming a mother without pain. The natural birth, 12th edition, Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1963
  7. ↑ Address of our Holy Father Pius XII. to doctors and gynecologists about painless childbirth and the Christian faith January 8, 1956. Herder-Korrespondenz, tenth year 1955/56, fifth issue, February 1955, pp. 224–228
  8. ^ Grantley Dick-Read
  9. ↑ Stüwe, M .: gymnastics and yoga in preparation for birth. Hippokrates Verlag, Stuttgart 2003; ISBN 3-8304-5245-4
personal data
SURNAME Dick-Read, Grantly
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English gynecologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Beccles , Norfolk
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1959
Place of death Wroxham , Norfolk