Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-265) and index.

"In Deliver Me from Pain, Jacqueline H. Wolf asks how a treatment such as obstetric anesthesia, even when it posed serious risk to mothers and newborns, paradoxically came to assuage women's anxiety about birth." "Each chapter begins with the story of a birth, dramatically illustrating the unique practices of the era being examined. Deliver Me from Pain covers the development and use of anesthesia from ether and chloroform in the mid-nineteenth century; to amnesiacs, barbiturates, narcotics, opioids, tranquilizers, saddle blocks, spinals, and gas during the mid-twentieth century; to epidural anesthesia today." "As women make decisions about anesthesia today, 'Deliver Me from Pain offers them insight into how women made this choice in the past and why each generation of mothers has made dramatically different decisions."--BOOK JACKET.

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