Dr. Joseph B. DeLee, OBG

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Son of Morris DeLee and Dora Tobias

Dr. Joseph Boliver De Lee was an internationally known obstetrician who organized a team of doctors to deliver babies in the Maxwell Street area. He later helped to found Chicago Lying-In Hospital at the University of Chicago; was one of the founders of the American College of Surgeons; and wrote three standard obstetrical textbooks. He established Lying-In to make modern obstetric methods and sanitation available to indigent mothers. The hospital's low death rates helped convince mothers to give birth in hospitals rather than at home.

Dr.DeLee served as head of obstetrics at Northwestern University and chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago. He changed the focus of health care during labor and delivery from responding to problems as they arose to preventing problems through routine use of interventions to control the course of labor. This change led to medical interventions being applied not just to the relatively small number of women who had a diagnosed problem, but instead to every woman in labor.

Dr. DeLee established the first "incubator station" for premature babies in the USA at the Chicago Lying-In Hospital in 1898. Among other inventions he is credited with and that are still commonly used is the suctioning device that removes mucous from the infants throat, forcep deliveries, and episiotomies.

American obstetrics is still functioning under the medical paradigm of childbirth it inherited from Dr. DeLee.