High-Society Framing: The Brooklyn Eagle and the Popularity of Twilight Sleep in Brooklyn

ABSTRACT

Twilight Sleep (TS) is an obstetric intervention during which a laboring woman enters a semiconscious state via injection. TS received enthusiastic support in Brooklyn, NY, in The Brooklyn Eagle (TBE) newspaper between 1914 and 1918. The purpose of this article is to analyze the framing of TS in TBE as the most popular obstetric intervention among wealthy, White socialites in Brooklyn during the period. The coverage in TBE prompted a nearly universally positive perception of TS among the newspaper’s wider readership. After extensive historiographical research and rhetorical analysis of newspaper coverage of TS in TBE, we discovered a form of framing we call “high-society framing,” rooted in both wealth and notoriety. We discuss four possible effects of high-society framing: The first is the ability of high-society framing to attract or repel the public regarding a health care issue, and the second is the impact of high-society framing on public perception of medical interventions, procedures, or pharmaceuticals. A third possible effect of high-society framing is that it can alter notions of necessity, and a fourth is that high-society framing can elicit a tacit acceptance of medical interventions, procedures, and pharmaceuticals, thus obfuscating risk. Finally, we argue that high-society framing has implications for the discussion of health care in present-day mediated discourses.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Dr. Heather Zoller, Dr. Teri Thompson, Dr. Laura Ellingson, and Dr. Heather Carmack and the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this article. The authors also thank research assistants Eric McPherson, Jade Myers, Kelly Rice Ackerman, Julie Rose Freeze, and Samantha Vineyard, as well as editor Shannon Lednum Pervis. A special thank you to Jaclyn Marsh for her assistance with our analysis of The Brooklyn Eagle. Also, the authors appreciate the efforts of Donna Gunter and Amanda Binder, reference librarians at UNC Charlotte, for assistance with data collection.

Notes

¹ Dr. Gauss and Krönig, who pioneered the “Freiburg Method” of TS, ran the “Frauenklinik” in Freiburg, Germany (Johnson & Quinlan, 2015). The Freiburg Method worked as follows: During the first stage of labor, the patient received the intramuscular injection. After the injection, the doctor showed an object or gave a directive to the patient; the doctor returned 15 minutes later to see whether the patient remembered said object or directive. If the patient failed to remember what happened 15 minutes previously, she received no subsequent dosage of scopolamine until memory returned (Leupp & Hendrick, 1915). Subsequent injections contained only scopolamine and thus did not relieve pain, although the amnestic nature of scopolamine prevented the majority of women from remembering pain (Wolf, 2009). After the final injection, the patient normally slept until she awoke to meet her child for the first time. Women reported sitting up hours after birth to have a meal and spend time with their baby, all considered rare at that time (“Mothers Discuss ‘Twilight Sleep,’” 1914).

² For more on The New York Times coverage of TS, see Johnson and Quinlan (2015), as well as more than 30 articles discussing the topic (“Doctors disagree on Twilight Sleep.,” 1915; “Mothers exhibit,” 1915; “Twilight Sleep vindicated,” 1914; “‘Twilight Sleep’ has come to stay,” 1914; “Urges fair test of Twilight Sleep,” 1914).

³ For more on the panic over falling birth rates among wealthy, educated Whites in the period, and a discussion of President Theodore Roosevelt’s use of the term “race suicide,” see Bederman (1995).

⁴ With the influx of new immigrant groups, real estate prices changed and desired neighborhoods shifted—Williamsburg changed from an exclusive resort area for the Vanderbilts and their circle to an immigrant community, while fashionable families migrated into the newly desirable Park Slope (Schroth, 1974).

⁵ In the early 20th century, physicians in Brooklyn and around the United States continued to look to Europe—Germany and France in particular—for the most cutting-edge research and medical treatments. While medical training in America steadily improved after the publication of the groundbreaking Flexner Report of 1910 (which graded medical schools in America based on the European model), many new medical school graduates were woefully underprepared to practice medicine. As early as the 1870s and 1880s, leading physicians traveled to Europe to receive training and conduct research unavailable at home, and when they returned, they brought a dedication to research and laboratory study that began to alter the landscape of American medicine (Bonner, 1990). However, at the time of Flexner’s report, the reorganization of American medical training was well under way, and the report prompted swift change—more than 40,000 copies of the report, which included suggestions for medical education, were distributed across America and Europe (Bonner, 1990). Flexner’s support for experimental science within medical training revolutionized education at American medical schools by suggesting that medicine is a science. However, its wealthy White benefactors, including the Carnegies and the Rockefeller Institute, informed the perspective of the report. As a result, women and African-Americans quickly lost ground in medicine in America. (For more on the German medical tradition in American medicine see Bonner [1990, 1995]).

⁶ We focused on three journals: The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children (AJOGDWC), Medical Record, and New York Medical Journal, and on a magazine entitled Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics (SGO).

⁷ The most worthwhile material was at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, with an archive cataloguing newly acquired material from LICH under the auspices of a recent merger.

⁸ The full list of 103 articles is available upon request; many of these are listed in the current “References” section.

⁹ The full list of 42 articles is available upon request; many of these are listed in the current “References” section.

¹⁰ For more on Paltrow’s views and on the particulars on “the nuts and bolts of colonics,” see http://goop.com/the-nuts-and-bolts-of-colonics.

¹¹ For more on the debate surrounding Gwyneth Paltrow’s health and wellness suggestions see Mullany (2015).

¹² The Latisse website explains the pigmentation change that can occur: http://www.latisse.com/FAQs.aspx