Dr. Garson Romalis, a Vancouver physician who performed abortions, was shot and severely wounded by an unknown assailant 3 years ago. In this article he tells Anne Mullens about the incident and its aftermath. The shooting, which has since been linked with the attempted murder of 2 other abortion providers, ...

Pregnant, drug dependent women present for treatment with a variety of medical and psychosocial issues. When medical sequelae include HIV infection, effective medical and psychosocial management is essential for both mother and fetus/infant. To better understand and characterize this high-risk population, the present study examined personality features and psychopathology in ...

The introduction of lithium salts almost a century ago and the subsequent approval of lithium carbonate for the treatment of patients with bipolar disorder represent one of the cornerstones of modern psychopharmacology. The onset of bipolar disorder in women often occurs during the childbearing years, which complicates the treatment decisions ...

31 female-to-male transsexuals treated in the Department of Plastic Surgery, Medical University of Lódź, were examined. Anthropometric measurements were carried out according to Martin's technique. 23 measured characteristics of the examined transsexuals were studied; they were compared with identical characteristics in males and females of the control group. The results ...

Childbirth is essentially women's business, a natural female act being performed since the beginning of mankind. However, as Western society has evolved, so too has the management of childbirth. It is the medical profession that has gained control of providing care for childbearing women, to the detriment of many women's ...

BACKGROUND: Female sex workers (FSWs) in Thailand are at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Although regular attendance at public STD clinics is required, FSWs may frequently use medications obtained in the community for STDs. OBJECTIVES: To determine the frequency of use of medications for STDs from sources other ...

This chapter discusses medical abortion as an alternative to surgical abortion, as well as its safety, efficacy, and availability to adolescent patients. Medical abortion is viewed by many patients as a less traumatic and more private way to achieve pregnancy termination, and the issues of privacy and confidentiality are even ...

The combination of RU486 (mifepristone) and prostaglandin analogues has been used for medical abortion in several European centres. We surveyed 41 Australian women who successfully used this method of abortion in a World Health Organization-sponsored trial. Overall, the women were satisfied with the method and found the associated pain level ...

Müllerian anomalies usually come to medical attention when they become problematic and require treatment. Most of these complications require surgical correction. The most commonly presenting anomaly is the double uterus which can be the source of recurrent abortion and preterm deliveries. The Strassman, Jones and Tompkins metroplasties have been shown ...

Induction of labour, defined as stimulation of uterine contractions before the spontaneous onset of labour, is indicated when the condition of the mother or fetus precludes awaiting the onset of spontaneous labour. In current medical practice, induction of labour comprises 2 phases: cervical priming and induction of contractions. Although numerous ...

Over the last three decades the menopause has continued to interest the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry and the mass media. Although there exist many different views on the menopause, there is one common denominator. Menopause is depicted as an exclusively female condition. The medical discourse on menopause seems to ...

Medication use during pregnancy has changed over time because of various factors: new products have been marketed, concerns have arisen regarding safety and efficacy, public education has increased, and some prescription medications have been granted nonprescription status by the Food and Drug Administration. The purpose of this investigation was to ...

Alma Dea Morani was the first female member of the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. She is now retired from active practice and living in Philadelphia, but her life continues to reflect her role as a plastic surgeon. She was drawn to medicine by the Women's Medical College ...

BACKGROUND: Although mortality from conditions amenable to medical intervention has frequently been shown to be higher in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CCEE) than in the countries of Western Europe (CWE), the contribution of these mortality differences to the East-West gap in life expectancy is unknown. We have ...

Women phoning to request an abortion at a free-standing abortion clinic who were less than 46 days from the last menstrual period were given a choice between a surgical abortion and a medical abortion induced with methotrexate and misoprostol. Twenty-six percent (116 of 405 women) chose a medical abortion. Younger ...

OBJECTIVE: We investigated safety, efficacy, and acceptability of an oral regimen of medical abortion compared with surgical abortion in three developing countries. STUDY DESIGN: Women (n = 1373) with amenorrhea < or = 56 days chose either surgical abortion (as provided routinely) or 600 mg of mifepristone followed after 48 ...

We present the first study of voluntary female sterilisation in Burkina Faso. The average woman undergoing tubal ligation was a 37 year old, married, house wife para 8 with five living children. The main reasons for TL were: achieved desired family size (45.9%) and medical reason (29.5%). The TL was ...

Two hundred women in early second trimester were recruited in a study to monitor the utilisation of antimalarial drugs prescribed for prophylaxis or treatment of malaria during their attendance at the antenatal clinic of Muhimbili Medical Centre. Information regarding the use of antimalarial drugs was obtained during an interview using ...

Crack mothers-particularly African American and Latina women-have been constructed as maternal villains who actively and permanently damage their offspring. Many women have been arrested or lost parental rights to their children because of child neglect charges. Despite this panic, recent medical and legal research indicates that reports of damage to ...

This article offers a historical view of the women in the medical profession from the Homeric epics to Soranus and Galen until the early Middle Ages, in both the Eastern and Western Mediterranean areas. Recent important medical-historical papers well claify the contribution of women in health care in both the ...

After being denied the opportunity to study medicine and work at home, Dr. Leonora Howard King became Canada's first female medical missionary to China. Although she attempted to wear both the religious and secular hats handed her by the Women's Foreign Missionary Society, Howard King found that she was too ...

BACKGROUND: Although many studies have evaluated the outcomes of childbirth education, few have seriously considered the content of the classes or considered any curriculum other than Lamaze. This study contrasts the perspectives of Lamaze and Bradley childbirth classes toward the medical model of birth. METHODS: Four full series of Lamaze ...

Medical abortion opens a new choice to women wishing to terminate a pregnancy. Increasingly, providers in the developing and developed world will begin to offer this option. Yet, the nomenclature and concepts used for measuring failure of surgical abortion are not directly adaptable because of important differences inherent in the ...

OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of the introduction of new medical methods on the provision of therapeutic abortions at the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh. DESIGN: A review of the total number of abortions performed by medical and surgical means between 1989 and 1995 (inclusive); a prospective survey of the terminations of ...

An Alberta woman recently won a lawsuit against the government of Alberta for wrongful sterilization that took place when she was a 14-year-old ward at the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives. It was the first time the province has been held accountable for actions taken under the Sexual Sterilization ...

Central nervous system malformations are now frequently detected prenatally. Unfortunately, the progress in diagnosis having far outstripped that in therapeutics, the only question to answer is usually whether the pregnancy should be continued or terminated. Pediatric neurosurgeons have to deal with such problems more and more often. They are asked ...

This paper describes the process by which female typists became participants of sorts while transcribing audiotaped interviews. The primary data included sensitive and sexual subject matter about women's Pap smear (PS) experiences. Besides overcoming minor technical difficulties, the major discovery was that the typists had a tendency to interpolate and ...

Biosphere 2 is a 3.15-acre, 7-million ft. enclosed ecological space near Tucson, AZ. It contains five wilderness and two domestic biomes (rain forest, savanna, desert, ocean, marsh; agricultural station, living quarters), an original introduction of 3,800 species (approximately 20% extinctions have occurred), and a large basement "technosphere." Sealed inside Biosphere ...

This paper presents an analysis of an anti-abortionist's speech to a medical audience. It is shown that central to the speech is the way in which the speaker defines the context of the abortion debate and hence the categories of people involved. In particular, the speaker construes himself as a ...

The experiences of diethylstilbestrol (DES), used as a medication for pregnant women, provide a panorama of the effects of an elevated exposure to xenoestrogens during the development of a fetus. DES was common as pregnancy medication in North America, and several European countries from the 1950s into the 1970s. It ...

Women are now being assigned aboard U.S. Navy combatant vessels. The author describes his experiences aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier U.S.S. Dwight David Eisenhower during its 6-mo cruise in 1994, the first such cruise with women integrated into the entire crew. Both medically and operationally, the deployment was an unqualified ...

In 1864, Dean Edwin Fussell of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania tried to prevent Mary Putnam (later the eminent physician Mary Putnam Jacobi) from graduating. He claimed she had not fulfilled the requirements, and that granting her degree would give critics ammunition for their charges that a medical school ...

BACKGROUND: Induced abortion rates have declined in Finland since 1973. A possible explanation offered has been that of deteriorating data collection. METHODS: To assess the completeness of the Register, we compared the information from a consecutive sample of hospital records (N = 482) to the Finnish Abortion Register in 18 ...

To assess the frequency of bites by the Blandford fly, a postal survey was carried out at the end of the 1993 biting season. Questionnaires were sent to a random sample of 1,500 people, selected from the lists of the two general practices in Blandford Forum, and satisfactory replies were ...

S-Mephenytoin and chloroguanide (proguanil) oxidation was studied in 216 tanzanians. The mephenytoin S/R ratio in urine ranged from <0.1 to 1.16. The distribution was skewed to the right, without evidence of a bimodal distribution. Ten subjects (4.6%, 2.2% to 8.3%, 95% CI) with an S/R mephenytoin ratio >0.9, were arbitrarily ...

Despite its illegality until recently, abortion is estimated to have been responsible for almost half of the sharp postwar decline in the Greek birth rate. This article examines abortion as a part of a Greek contraceptive culture which has taken shape during the postwar period both in response, and in ...

Reuse of needles and syringes after home injection of medications and vitamins may be a risk for transmission of HIV. An exploratory study was done to determine (1) how commonly injectable medications were used in the home; (2) whether needles and syringes were reused; and (3) common practices for cleaning ...

This article provides estimates of the proportions of marriages which ended in divorce for the different groups of couples who have married since the 1950s. Over one quarter of all couples who married in the late 1970s and early 1980s had divorced by the end of 1994. As well as ...

Birth control movements that emerged in Europe and the United States during the last third of the nineteenth century lost their emancipatory and feminist potential in the twentieth century as they succumbed to control by the medical profession, eugenicists, and institutionalized goals of planned parenthood. The neo-Malthusian movement in France, ...

Toki-shakuyaku-san is a traditional Chinese herbal prescriptions that is composed of 6 herbal plants, i.e., peony root, atractylodes lancea rhizome, alisma rhizome, hoelen, cnidium rhizome and Japanese angelica root. Administration with Toki-shakuyaku-san normalized irregular menstrual cycle, healed cervical pseudo-erosion and reduced leukorrhagia in young women who had insufficient luteal function.

The legislation and the texts of the most important medical writers of Byzantine times have been studied with reference to abortions, the ethical aspect of this social and medico-legal problem, the theological and the scientific approach. The theoretical basis of the permanent and absolute condemnation of all kinds of abortions ...

Medical research on genital herpes indicates that women shed herpes asymptomatically. This paper examines the medical understanding of asymptomatic shedding of herpes among women as partial knowledge, meaning biased and incomplete, based upon folk models of male and female sexual bodies and upon the structure of medical practice. The focus ...

During the 1960s and 1970s, the maternal age-specific twinning rates were declining in England and Wales and many other countries. However, around 1980 this change reversed and since then twinning rates have been increasing. The question arises whether this increase is simply a consequence of hormonal induction of ovulation and ...

A follow-up study was conducted to determine the emotional and medical responses of anonymous ovum donors to participation in an ovum donation procedure. Medically, donors reported significant discomfort, particularly relating to bloating, immediately prior to retrieval and for a brief period following retrieval. However, donors indicated that these effects no ...

Two factors have caused major changes in the gender composition of the Israeli medical profession in recent years: (i) a wave of immigration from the former USSR, which increased the doctor population by approximately 70% and which included a majority of women physicians, and (ii) the entry of more Israeli ...

This paper provides a brief account of events leading to the establishment of the constitutional right to privacy in the case known as Griswold vs. State of Connecticut. It also discusses changes in the training of residents in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale University School of Medicine ...

A clinical trial of efficacy of methotrexate and misoprostol for abortion was performed involving 86 women requesting an abortion at < 56 days gestation. An acceptability evaluation was included in the design of the trial. Subjects were questioned before the study about their reasons for choosing a medical abortion and ...

A review of 12 published studies on patient attitudes and reactions to early first-trimester pregnancy termination by medical methods shows consistent patterns, despite important differences in study design, measurement and outcome. In most trials that offered participants a choice between surgical and medical abortion, 60-70% of patients chose the medical ...

Fetal tissue transplants that rely on abortions, and techniques used in prenatal diagnosis and artificial reproduction, have raised fervent and intractable opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and pro-life groups. Recent medical reports of advances in these areas have acknowledged the arguments offered by these organizations and, in turn, are ...

To determine consistency in usage of pedigree symbols by genetics professionals, we reviewed pedigrees printed in 10 human genetic and medical journals and 24 medical genetics textbooks. We found no consistent symbolization for common situations such as pregnancy, spontaneous abortion, death, or test results. Inconsistency in pedigree design can create ...