?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(WOMEN'S HISTORY--PROFESSIONAL.) Felix J. Underwood. Manual for Midwives. 40 pages, including numerous illustrations. Octavo, 9 x 6 inches, original tinted illustrated wrappers, moderate wear and soiling, tape repairs to inner wrappers; early owner's name penciled on rear inner wrapper. No place: Mississippi State Board of Health, circa 1935
A detailed guide for the licensed midwives of Mississippi, covering everything from sanitation to diet to life-saving techniques. None of the text is specific to race, but the illustrations depict Black midwives and patients. The author Felix Joel Underwood (1882-1959) ran the Mississippi Board of Health from 1924 to 1958, and per the Mississippi Encyclopedia "did not overlook the medical problems of African Americans " and "fought indifference to the plight of blacks and argued that poor housing and poverty rather than racial differences caused high levels of disease among African Americans."
This copy is signed by Mary D. Osborne (1875-1946), the state's Supervisor of Midwives. A certificate bearing her signature is reproduced on page 3, and the signatures are a close match.
The pamphlet is undated but is illustrated with three sample forms completed in 1930 and 1933. OCLC lists 8 editions, all quite scarce, dated from 1925 to 1962, with different pages counts--with only the 1935 edition matching the 40 pages in this edition. None traced at auction.
With--a photograph, 5½ x 3¼ inches, of a woman (possibly a midwife), found laid into the manual; inscribed "J.E. Brunk(?) for the Macks" on recto and "A midwife in Mississippi" (in a later hand) on verso.
