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On the childbirth topic, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's "A Midwife's Tale" is incredibly thorough and accessible, but the searchable online diary of Martha Ballard at dohistory.org is also excellent and, though near the end of your time period, would make a useful primary source. Another major database is the North American Women's Letters and Diaries, which is searchable by whether or not the author had children as well as by keyword. If you don't have access to that database, Judith Waltzer Leavitt's "Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950" has a chapter constructed from many women's diaries in the 18th century including Mary Vial Holyoke, who suffered a number of difficult births and infant deaths and wrote about it explicitly in her diary, portions of which are also published and available. The student writing on the history of cancer may want to consult Siddhartha Mukherjee's "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer". While not a historical monograph (Mukherjee is an oncologist), the author does pay considerable attention to terminology used to describe cancer before the modern day and gives numerous historical examples that might be expanded on. Sonic Sonic Woytonik PhD Candidate, Department of History University of New Hampshire kai763@unh.edu --
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