The New York Times, The Ladies' Home Journal and Reader's Digest ran articles praising the removal of ''the primal curse,'' and increasing numbers of patients demanded Twilight Sleep. But the small dose of morphine only disinhibited the patients and didn't actually prevent pain, so patients had to be strapped down and could be heard screaming several floors away. Doctors worried about the drug also causing hemorrhages, slowing contractions and depressing the baby's breathing. The campaign eventually died out after one of its leaders died hemorrhaging in childbirth, but Twilight Sleep continued to be used until the 60's, when it was finally killed off by antichemical sentiments. During the 20's and 30's, medicine gradually became a science, and doctors learned what caused pain, how chemicals were transported across the placenta and how to control anesthetic dosages.
Current practice says everybody was right.
Women during delivery vary enormously in physical condition, emotion and pain experienced. Most now deliver with anesthesia, done with a range of drugs that do not affect the baby, administered by a needle inserted just outside the spinal cord to block pain from the navel down. But the natural childbirth movement continues, and childbirth also routinely comes unmedicated, with relatives, friends, hot tubs and videotapes. Pain has now become an option. Pain is what interests Caton.