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Time, Magic, and Gynecology1 Contemporary Israeli Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Miriam Jacoby
Miriam Jacoby
Affiliation:
School of Public Health, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Abstract

This paper describes the way in which a simple device, the pregnancy wheel, has been used by the medical profession to impose a new way of measuring and experiencing pregnancy.The change involves counting in weeks instead of counting in months and it is gradually replacing a commonsensical method that had deep physiological and cultural roots. In contrast, the medical methodology of counting forty weeks is more complicated and lacks direct connections to the events of pregnancy

In the encounter between the doctor and the pregnant woman the pregnancy wheel has a variety of uses, among them determinations of the age and estimated size of the fetus.It plays an additional role, however, in the medicalization of pregnancy by providing the doctor with privileged information. It also influences modes of thinking through the way in which it deals with the question of the beginning of pregnancy, a question that has clear moral implications

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 1995 , pp. 231 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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Footnotes

1

In the Israeli medical system, gynecologists are also obstetricians. Since people refer to them as gynecologists, this term is also used here.

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