Midwifery and Medicine
Relief Society Organization Research Guide
From the inception of the Relief Society, its sisters have been community leaders in healing, midwifery, and nursing. For example, throughout the Church’s pioneer era, Relief Society sisters participated in healing ordinances such as anointing and blessing women before childbirth. Then in 1873 Eliza R. Snow told the sisters that Brigham Young had requested that women enter the field of medicine. She stated that President Young wanted women to get medical degrees, study nursing and midwifery, and share their knowledge with sisters in their wards and stakes. Eliza R. Snow told the women: “We have to get up these classes and attend to all these things. Don’t you see that our sphere is increasing? Our sphere of action will continually widen, and no woman in Zion need to mourn because her sphere is too narrow.”69
Relief Society sisters opened maternity hospitals and the Deseret Hospital. The Deseret Hospital was opened in 1882. Its board consisted of members of the Relief Society. The two main doctors, Dr. Ellen B. Ferguson and Dr. Romania B. Pratt, were women who had accepted the opportunity offered by Brigham Young to go back east and earn their medical degrees. Drs. Ferguson and Pratt, as well as others, also taught midwifery and nursing classes. Relief Society sisters and the young ladies who were members of the Young Women Mutual Improvement Association often volunteered for the Red Cross. Many Relief Society sisters served their families, wards, and communities through their knowledge and practice of the healing arts.
Below is a sampling of items related to midwifery and medicine:
Church History Topic: Healing
A historical essay on healing in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Church History Topic: Pioneer Women and Medicine
A historical look at pioneer women and their approach to medicine.
“Eliza R. Snow, Discourse, August 14, 1873,” The First Fifty Years of Relief Society, churchhistorianspress.org.
Eliza R. Snow’s talk that includes the call for women to study medicine.
Lists of women set apart as midwives, 1873–1888, CR 100 423
Record of women blessed and set apart to be midwives and nurses.
Maternity hospital reports, 1941, CR 11 60
Reports detailing the establishment of maternity hospitals in the Cottonwood and Snowflake Stakes.
Midwife instruction book, circa 1894, MS 14430
Minutes of a lesson series for midwifery.
Lois Bassett family papers, 1898, MS 20669
Includes a copy of a nursing certificate given to Lois Bassett from the Salt Lake Stake Relief Society and text from a blessing where Bassett was set apart to be a nurse.
Latter-day Saints Relief Society nurse class commencement program, MS 20701
Invitation to the commencement exercises of the Latter-day Saints’ Relief Society Nurse Class, June 24, 1903.
Marinda A. Bateman record book, 1874–1909, MS 5478
Contains a list of babies delivered by Marinda A. Bateman, a midwife in West Jordan, Utah.
Relief Society Class in Red Cross Surgical Dressings, PH 2032
Photograph of Relief Society sisters in Red Cross surgical dressings.
Deseret Hospital Board of Directors, circa 1882, PH 2211
Photograph of the Deseret Hospital Board of Directors, including Eliza R. Snow, Emmeline B. Wells, and Dr. Romania Pratt Penrose.
Midwife class in Salt Lake City, 1896, PH 2408
Photograph of a group of women in midwife training, with Dr. Ellis R. Shipp as their teacher.
Relief Society nurse school, 1901, PH 2790
Photograph of a graduating nursing class with Dr. Margaret C. Roberts as their teacher.
Parade in Ogden, Utah, to raise relief funds for victims of World War I, PH 4707
Women marching in a parade in Ogden, Utah, as part of the Red Cross effort.
Sources:
69. “Eliza R. Snow, Discourse, August 14, 1873,” The First Fifty Years of Relief Society, accessed Sept. 28 2020, churchhistorianspress.org.