TIL the Aztecs regarded childbirth as a form of battle. Women who died during childbirth were thought to rise to one of the highest heavens - the same one as for male warriors who died in battle. - eviltoast
  • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Maternal mortality wasn’t quite a Holocaust until they started having women give birth in hospitals without germ theory so nobody was washing their fucking hands and the doctors were reaching up there to check on the placenta and killing loads of women with puerperal sepsis. 18 percent maternal mortality rate at the time, when 300 years in the past (based on church records of births and deaths) it was closer to 3 percent.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis