Some of the things I am about to say may seem obvious. However, I feel justified as this is a “progress blog” and therefore stating some obvious things seems appropriate. Research is the foundation for creating new knowledge. The investigator must collect what is known and lay that out as the foundation for building the new awareness and understanding. Historians begin in the past and for us this is exciting, as recounted in my previous blog. This journey is a bit different as I am particularly conscious about laying the groundwork for a Digital Humanities project. I regularly ask the question; how does this foundation need to be different?
Historians have, as part of the craft, documented carefully and added to the preservation of historical records. The citation processes that terrorize every first year college student are an artifact from the methods of historians and archivists to mark their trail of research. Change is evidenced in language. Whereas I have ‘kept track of and documented my sources’, now I am creating metadata, which includes categories and references not conceived when the trail was formatted on paper instead of in bits, bites and digital files. “Tagging” has a whole new meaning then in my teenage years ‘tagging’ artifacts at the local historical society. My research plan has expanded systematically and strategically to include consideration of how my “data” should be preserved to provide usefulness and accessibility for projects that may build from mine.
So, after the initial deep dive into reviewing what is already written about Cleveland’s women, what is the current status of the foundation? I received a startling reminder of why this project was initiated in the first place; where are the women in healthcare? I had direct confrontation with the question posed by Diana Wendt of the Smithsonian Division of Medicine and Science; what if there is nothing there? The “recorded history” of women and healthcare in Cleveland is practically non-existent. There are scant ‘pictures on the walls’ of women in healthcare institutions and in the histories and accounts there are few names listed. My original heartfelt response to Ms. Wendt was, “even the absence of information is interesting.” Fortunately, she agreed. Now in the face of this glaring absence, the job becomes: to define the size and nature of the absence, make the history interesting….and digital.
The historian’s task is finding and interpreting, ‘combing the archives, seeking out new resources; being a “detective”.[1] Lendol Calder has reframed this process as “Uncoverage” and advocated inserting “the work” of historians into history instruction.[2] While women’s history has had to argue that examination of half the population is truly worthwhile. Sam Wineburg analyzes the significance of uncovering this different view in his analysis of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale claiming,
“It is in the very dailiness, the exhaustive, repetitious dailiness, that the real power of Martha Ballard’s book lies… acts of statecraft (but now) encompasses everyday acts of childbirth, the daily routines of ordinary people trying to make ends meet.” [3]
To fully understand the human experience; the whole of human experience must be understood. As a historian, I need to ask the questions that will reveal the gap of knowledge in the record and when “telling the story”, convey the significance of the missing information.
The questions begin. “Why is there nothing there?” Just asking the question draws attention away from the existent cultural script of the “history of healthcare.” In an of itself the ‘social history of medicine’ is a change, from the “history of medicine” which only focused on doctors, wrought by the work of Charles E. Rosenberg, Rosemary Stevens and others. As we investigate, we will find answers. In Martha Ballard’s Diary which recorded, “the long autumns spent winding quills, pickling meat, and sorting cabbages”, we can see the time-consuming tasks of women’s lives. Midwifery was Ballard’s source of income, but would it have been conceived of as “healthcare”? The tasks of women’s lives varied greatly from men’s. One story observed by Wineman, is the evolution of the medical profession in which women’s roles and intellect were subordinated in which he recounted that 20 years after the first medical course, “a Harvard professor (who) stated, ‘We cannot instruct women as we do men in the science of medicine’.”[4]
This investigation will not only create a digital footprint in this area, it will utilize and build from other digital projects. For example, The Recipes Project https://recipes.hypotheses.org/category/digital-history in accumulating and transcribing recipes from 17th century has discovered a wealth of home remedies and practices previously not viewed as “innovations in healthcare”. Social and professional customs and initiatives must also be interpreted in a different light. Elizabeth Hampton Robb came to Cleveland as the new wife of a newly hired Western Reserve University professor/obstetrician. At Johns Hopkins, Robb was Superintendent of the Nurses Training School. Even in her new non-recognized and non-professional status, Robb wrote textbooks for nursing, sat on the Board at Lakeside Hospital and created change in standards and healthcare practice. More questions are raised, what impact has women’s acceptance of the social role of ‘Adam’s Rib’, had on making and sustaining their invisibility in history?
New questions, new formats, new knowledge; the building continues….
[1] Winks, Robin. Historian as Detective. Harper & Row, Publishers; 1st edition, 1969.
[2] Calder, Lendol. “Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the Historical Survey”. The Journal of American History. V. 92, no. 4. (Mar. 2006), Pp. 1358-1370.
[3] Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, based on her Diary, 1785-1812. Univ of Virginia, Knopf, 1990. In Wineburg, Sam, “Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts.” The Phi Delta Kappan, V. 80, No. 7. (Mar. 1999), p. 488-99.
[4] Ibid.
