Warren Museum's Mystery Box Reveals a “Twilight” Story

Catherine Pate Brigham and Women’s Hospital Archives Warren Anatomical Museum

An open metal box containing anesthesia artifacts collected by Bert B. Hershenson, MD
Doctor’s Birthing Kit, circa 1910

This mysterious metal box filled with labeled glass bottles and anesthesia paraphernalia was one of the anesthesia history artifacts collected by Bert B. Hershenson, MD, Director of Anesthesia (1942–1956) at the Boston Lying-in Hospital (a Brigham and Women’s parent hospital). It was donated by Mrs. Hershenson to Harvard Medical School’s Warren Anatomical Museum in 1972 with no identifying information other than that it once belonged to a Viennese doctor “two generations ago.” A recent provenance investigation of the box and the objects inside, done here at the Center for the History of Medicine, indicated that the original owner was probably a turn-of-the-century obstetrician who may have been a practitioner of Dämmerschlaf or “Twilight Sleep.”

Picture of the March 7, 1915 Boston Sunday Post article, "Scores of Twilight Sleep Babies in Hub: Boston Physician Who Has Had More Than 100 Cases Urges Twilight Sleep Club"Twilight Sleep was introduced in Germany at the beginning of the 20thcentury. A combination of morphine, to mitigate pain, and scopolamine to cause amnesia, was given by injection to women in labor. Its effectiveness in preventing pain was minimal. Its true effectiveness was in causing many women to forget the pain and the subsequent extreme, sometimes violent, behavior the drug combination often caused. In 1914, reports of “pain free” deliveries in Europe gave rise in the U.S. to the National Twilight Sleep Association, which successfully campaigned for the widespread adoption of the technique. However, in 1915 Mrs. Francis X. Carmody, a leader of the organization, died in childbirth. Although probably unrelated to the drugs, news of her death and subsequent safety concerns caused a fall from favor of Twilight Sleep in America and the end of the Association. Newer variations on the technique did continue through the 1960s until the advent of the natural childbirth movement.

Object list:

  • Metal box (for easy sterilization) from medical supply house Medicinisches Waarenhaus: Berlin
  • Esmarch type inhaler (style introduced in 1877). The wire mask covered by a cloth kept chloroform from touching the patient’s face.
  • Chloroform, a surgical anesthetic.
  • Ergotin, used to treat excessive bleeding and to speed up labor.
  • Camphor, traditionally used as a topical analgesic, or to control nausea.
  • Morphium, for pain relief.
  • Unidentified bottle, with the handwritten word “injection’ in German.
  • Dr. Vomel brand catgut, probably used for tying off the umbilical cord.

This news post was originally published on the Center for the History of Medicine’s Wordpress site.