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| A Midwife's Tale: the Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 | 
 enlarge | Creator: Laurel Ulrich
Publisher: Vintage Books
Category: Book
List Price: £15.95
Buy New: £4.62
You Save: £11.33 (71%)
New (19) Used (20) from £4.62
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 94235
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Vintage Books Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 1
ISBN: 0679733760
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.16
EAN: 9780679733768
Publication Date: June 1991
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 combination of diary and research February 4, 1999
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is impressive because of the way the author combines the diary and her own research to complement it. The result is that the reader gets an insightful look into what daily life was like for Martha who lived in the late 18th and early 19th century. In most history books one can learn about the big events that happened during a certain time period, but it is rare to understand how people actually lived. Reading this book one sees how much time women spent on daily chores. Because Martha was a midwife and helped the sick, there is also interesting descriptions of how she would treat people and how this differed from how a doctor would treat people. Some incidents touched upon in her diary were extremely interesting and show us that there were similar scandals then as there are today. While some of the details of Martha's daily life are tedious to read, they are helpful in understanding how she lived. Her diary also lacks emotional insight and remains descriptive and impartial, which makes it less entertaining, but no less historically valuable.
 Blah. February 3, 1999
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Thatcher herself said, on page 9, that "it is in the very dailiness, the exhaustive, repetitious dailiness, that the real power of Martha Ballard's book lies." It seems to me that it takes a certain person to grasp this power and enjoy this type of book. I on the other hand don't have enough of imagination to make up for what this book lacks. -Ashley Trout, Washington DC
A Midwife's Tale was interesting, but tedious. February 2, 1999
A Midwife's Tale is chock full of fascinating facts about the life of Martha Ballard, a New England midwife in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Her diary provides the reader a glimpse of her everyday life. It also gives a general idea of the culture of Martha's time. Through the details of her diary, we learn about gender roles, family and community structure, religion and the church, law, medicine, agriculture, and just about every other aspect of life after the American Revolution. The information is interesting, but the reading quickly becomes tedious because of the repetitive nature of Martha's journal entries. I suppose, however, that this accurately reflects Martha Ballard's life.
 my neighbor over the fence October 1, 1998
I found comfort in Martha. The coming and going of her days passing between my fingers with the turning of the page. I had the good fortune to find this book at the very time I returned to college. One of my classes is an American History class. I spoke to my professer and told him that while he did a fine job telling the facts, Martha filled me in on the "gossip". She made the words and events real. I found the reading of this to be a pleasure,I shared her with anyone who was willing to hear my "Martha" fact of the day and hit a sorrow at realizing the end of the book ment the end of this fine women. Can one grieve and feel a loss for someone unknown that died so long ago? In a way I did. Read the book and keep the spirit of her and all the others alive!
Excellent July 9, 1998
This book provides a captivating look into the life and work of early american women. As a nurse practitioner, I found it even more interesting. The "professional battles" that Mrs. Ballard fought, the ways in which she contributed to the fields of nursing and medicine, even the way in which she "administered" her medications are still at the core of advanced practice nursing today. Mrs. Ballard and many of her contemporaries are represented as hardworking ,industrious women who too, had to balance "family and work"- and did so successfully. Historically, the book documents that advanced practice nursing is not a new phenomena, but one which was alive and widely used in early America. From a medical standpoint, it documents the professional change from farmer/physician to that of physician alone. By the conclusion physicians were becoming the person preferred to deliver babies. A living could now be earned by practicing medicine alone. The book provides a wonderful glimpse into the the rich history of health care- from birth to post mortem/burial via the life of Martha Ballard.
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