{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,27]],"date-time":"2026-03-27T21:42:54Z","timestamp":1774647774044,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":89,"publisher":"BMJ","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,30]],"date-time":"2023-05-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1685404800000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["bmj.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Med Humanities"],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,4]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2023,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>The story of twilight sleep is an important, yet neglected, episode in the history of obstetric pain relief in Britain. One reason for its neglect in historical writing is that most of the discussion of the therapy took place in newspapers, particularly the <jats:italic>Weekly Dispatch<\/jats:italic>. Using digitised newspapers, as well as medical journals, this article reconstructs the largely overlooked story of twilight sleep in Britain. Twilight sleep was comprised of two drugs, scopolamine and morphine, which acted together to remove the pain of labour, as well as memory of it. Twilight sleep gained popularity in 1915 in Britain, a year after it became popular in America, on which most scholarship has focused. One of the main advocates for the use of twilight sleep in Britain was Hanna Rion, who wrote a series of weekly articles in 1916 campaigning for its use. Rion\u2019s articles, and the response to them, show how the rise in popularity of twilight sleep reflected concerns about a declining birth rate amidst the backdrop of World War I. Through studying twilight sleep we see how women began to see themselves as consumers and shape medical practice, before the natural childbirth movement, which it has traditionally been attributed to. Therefore, twilight sleep provides us with the missing link in the story of obstetric anaesthetics, between the discovery of chloroform in 1847 and the natural childbirth movement in the 1930s.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1136\/medhum-2022-012595","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,30]],"date-time":"2023-05-30T13:21:12Z","timestamp":1685452872000},"page":"659-667","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/crossmarkpolicy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Hanna Rion and <i>The Weekly Dispatch<\/i>\u2019s twilight sleep crusade"],"prefix":"10.1136","volume":"49","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5717-4755","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Eleanor","family":"Taylor","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"239","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1136\/bmj.2.2551.E77"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.2","unstructured":"\u201cHull Daily Mail.\u201d 1914. In Social Record. British Newspaper Archives."},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.3","unstructured":"\u201cLiverpool Echo.\u201d 1914. In Painless Childbirth. British Newspaper Archives."},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.4","unstructured":"\u201cCornishman.\u201d 1915. In Twilight Sleep. British Library Newspapers."},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.5","unstructured":"\u201cPainless Childbirth in Twilight Sleep.\u201d 1915. In The Athenaeum, 385"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1136\/bmj.1.2838.891"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1136\/bmj.2.2869.927"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.8","unstructured":"\u201cBuchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser.\u201d 1916. In Interesting War Items. British Newspaper Archives."},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.9","unstructured":"\u201cBurton Observer and Chronicle.\u201d 1916. 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Pickering & Chatto.","DOI":"10.4324\/9781315654409-3"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Al-Gailani Salim . 2018. \u201cHospital Birth.\u201d In Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day, edited by Kassell Lauren , Hopwood Nick , and Flemming Rebecca , 553\u201366. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.","DOI":"10.1017\/9781107705647.046"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.15","unstructured":"Barnard A . 1917. \u201cThe Truth About \u2018Twilight Sleep\u2019: An Unbiased Investigation.\u201d In The Quiver. Vol. 52. 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W . 1986. \u201cBrought to Bed Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950 \/ Judith Walzer Leavitt.\u201d In Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950. New York: Oxford University Press."},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.47","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1136\/medhum-2017-011419"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.48","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Marks L. V . 1996. \u201cMetropolitan Maternity: Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in Early Twentieth Century London.\u201d In Metropolitan Maternity: Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in Early Twentieth Century London. Vol. 36. Amsterdam: Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.","DOI":"10.1163\/9789004418455"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.49","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1136\/pmj.79.929.168"},{"key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.50","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Nathoo A . 2009. \u201cHearts Exposed.\u201d In Hearts Exposed Transplants and the Media in 1960s Britain \/ Ayesha Nathoo. 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Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press."},{"issue":"2","key":"2025092411453150000_49.4.659.89","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1136\/medhum-2017-011417","article-title":"\u201cShifting Understandings of Labour Pain in Canadian Medical History.\u201d","volume":"44","author":"Wood","year":"2018","journal-title":"Medical Humanities"}],"container-title":["Medical Humanities"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/syndication.highwire.org\/content\/doi\/10.1136\/medhum-2022-012595","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,24]],"date-time":"2025-09-24T18:45:44Z","timestamp":1758739544000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/mh.bmj.com\/lookup\/doi\/10.1136\/medhum-2022-012595"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,30]]},"references-count":89,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,12,19]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2023,12]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1136\/medhum-2022-012595"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/medhum-2022-012595","relation":{},"ISSN":["1468-215X","1473-4265"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1468-215X","type":"print"},{"value":"1473-4265","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2023,5,30]]}}}