Maternal Death: Scotland's Enlightenment

The historical literature on maternal death gives little attention to the problem in Scotland. Data in a popular, yet serious, national publication for 1739-1772 suggest that there was some public interest in the problem of maternal mortality. This interest may have been associated with the democratization of many forms of knowledge, central to the Scottish Enlightenment. The publication of these data is linked to the little-known, but ground-breaking, work of Alexander Gordon on puerperal fever in Aberdeen, which long predated the study by Ignaz Semmelweis. This 18th-century publication is compared with the popular media of the 21st century.