A horse named 'Twilight Sleep': the language of obstetric anaesthesia in 20th century Britain

Historians of medicine frequently marginalize or completely ignore the importance of linguistics in the development and dissemination of medical theories and clinical techniques, both in professional culture and in society at large. This is particularly true in the history of pain relief in labour, despite the significant role played by popular attitudes to birth and pain relief in the development of clinical services. This paper uses a simple form of citation analysis to examine shifts in the usage of terms related to regional nerve block techniques in The Lancet and The Times from 1900 to 1999. Graphical representations of these data are used to relate changes in the incidence of citations to key events in the 20th century history of obstetric anaesthesia in Britain. A study of the rise and fall of 'twilight sleep' in the early part of the century is used to demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages associated with this approach to medical history. Conclusions from this analysis are used to suggest (tentative) models for the acceptance and diffusion of medical words in professional and popular vocabularies.