"I returned home at 10 hour morn, find my house alone and everything in Arms. Did not find time to still down till 2 pm." How this still resonates as women try combine work in the outside world with the unrelenting demands of domesticity!

Kudoes to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich for this brilliantly edited, extremely necessary part of American history---a woman's life as told by observant, compassionate, hard-working Martha Ballard. Ulrich has included statistics of maternal and infant mortality that cause one to question the wisdom of the "heroic intervention" style of obstetrics that came later: Martha experienced only about a 4% loss rate, which stands up impressively until the days when antibiotics reduced the mortality rate to insignificance.


Formidable Foremom   December 26, 2006
 17 out of 17 found this review helpful


We've heard stories of how our great-great-great-grandmothers rose before dawn, plowed the lower forty, baked biscuits and then raised a barn, all before noon. A Midwife's Tale seems to confirm this. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich draws upon a remarkable document, the diary of a New England midwife, Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, who recorded the details of her daily life between 1785 to 1812. Ulrich deconstructs Ballard's laconic entries to reveal the complex routine of a woman who kept a household for seven people, ran a cottage textile workshop, and served as midwife at the birth 816 infants during her 27 years of practice. (There were male physicians in the community, but they rarely intervened in this woman-dominated ritual unless there was a breech or still-birth to be dismembered.) Ballard's ministrations, in fact, went far beyond birthing to the practice of general medicine. She could apply poultices, lance abscesses, expel worms, induce vomiting, stop hemorrhages, bring down a fever, and - all else failing -- gently close the eyes of the dead. In this way, writes Ulrich, the midwife "mediated the mysteries of birth, procreation, illness, and death."

With the help of collateral documents, Ulrich fills out Ballard's entries to give a more complete view of society in a milling village of the early 1800's. She also tracks Ballard's personal fortunes from the height of her prestige into eventual decline. The author takes pains to point out how much of this misfortune was inevitable (the elderly of any era are of necessity pushed from the center to the circumference of society) and how much was due to the hand dealt by fate: Martha had her daughters before her sons; the girls married and moved out, leaving their mother the care of three rather loutish males. The episode underscores how necessary a reliable pool of labor was to the running of any rural household; southern families had their slaves; northern families had their daughters. Historian John Lewis Gaddis calls this book "an exercise in historical paleontology [that] succeeds brilliantly." Winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for history.


Historically interesting.   October 21, 1996
 14 out of 17 found this review helpful

Perusing a personal diary (portions of the diary are included in the book) which contain sentence fragments and short descriptions of the day's activity, Laurel Ulrich's book, "A Midwife's Tale: The Diary of Martha Ballard," is a fascinating reconstruction in the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife who, during the Revolutionary War, is characterized as a feminist in her own right. By choice, many women left their homes to join their husbands to help fight the war; others were driven away by Brittish soldiers; but Martha Ballard, unaffected by the War and American Politics, resided at home with her husband, family, and friends. Incredibly, Ulrich writes in narrative style that Martha Ballard had performed in 27 years more than 800 deliveries in and around Hallowell, Maine, produced and distributed drugs, prepared burials and dissections, at a time when medicine was in its infancy. This is a true story of a woman who had been independent, strong, and productive throughout her life. In the environment surrounding Martha's world, "A Midwife's Tale" also portrays a 'women's community' that characterizes an almost perfect social and economic ideal of their time. The winner of numerous prizes, historians, history enthusiasts, and feminists will find this 352 page book (not including endnotes and index) a wonderful and interesting read.


Not Just a History Book   June 22, 2006
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

I have read "A Midwife's Tale" so many times that it has fallen apart. I went on Amazon to see if I could find a hard copy to replace the one I wore to pieces. When I saw the reviews, I decided to put my two cents in. I was also compelled to puchase the video based on this book. The video did an excellent job of translating the book to video and putting a voice to Martha. Although I was intrigued by the concept of a complete diary of a midwife, I was not prepared for the impact it would have on me. As an alternative health care provider, I often use herbs to help patients and have actually assisted in the delivery of 3 babies. I am an older woman that has raised my children and now have grandchildren. Martha's life parallelled mine in so many ways. She had a hard time finding help, her children were less then obedient, particularily her eldest son. Premarital sex was rampant. Her husband seemed to often ignore her. He was perfectly happy in jail while she froze at home while her children neglected her. Her faith in a God carried her so many times. I began to casually start reading chapters whenever I was having a particularily difficult day, thinking to myself, "I wonder what challenge Martha overcame this chapter?" She touched my life in such a tender, loving, healing way even though our lives were seperated by 100's of years. I wonder if she ever thought who would read her diary in the future and what an inspiration she would be? I offer this book as a gift of a wonderful woman's life.