Comrades in the Labor Room: The Lamaze Method of Childbirth Preparation and France's Cold War Home Front, 1951-1957.

NATURAL childbirth; LAMAZE, Fernand; NIKOLAEV, A. P.; COMMUNISM & medicine; FRENCH politics & government, 1945-1958; HISTORY of science; PARTI communiste francais; MEDICAL innovations; HEALTH policy; COLD War, 1945-1991; TWENTIETH century

SOVIET Union; FRANCE

The article discusses the psychoprophylactic method (PPM) of childbirth pioneered by Soviet professor A. P. Nikolaev, its popularization in the West by French obstetrician Fernand Lamaze in the 1950s, and the role of Cold War politics in the reception of the new method in France. The breathing methods employed in PPM as an alternative to anesthetics in obstetric pain relief are discussed, as is the role of the French Communist Party in encouraging Soviet medical innovations, and the response from the anticommunist right.