Puerperal Fever - Victims

Victims

Elizabeth of York, the mother of Henry VIII of England, died of puerperal fever one week after giving birth to a daughter. Other significant victims include author Jean Webster, English queens Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr (both wives of Henry VIII), housekeeping authority Isabella Beeton, and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman and mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. Suzanne Barnard, mother of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contracted childbed fever after giving birth to him, and died nine days later. Her infant son was also in perilous health following the delivery; the adult Rousseau later wrote that "I came into the world with so few signs of life that little hope was entertained of preserving me". He was nursed back to health by an aunt. African-American poet Phillis Wheatley (1753-84) died of puerperal fever.

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Famous quotes containing the word victims:

    Alas! regardless of their doom
    The little victims play;
    Thomas Gray (1716–1771)

    In all sincerity, we offer to the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past 25 years, abject and true remorse. No words of ours will compensate for the intolerable suffering they have undergone during the conflict.
    —Combined Loyalist Military Command. New York Times, p. A12 (October 14, l994)

    Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.
    Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)