John Whitridge Williams’ Contribution toDemocracy Abroad(The Fetus Treated as a Patient)

Overview

The idealism of American pioneers was a driving force in the development of science, democracy,and sociology in the United States. It also served as a model for the development of new democra-cies abroad. The first American grafted democracy was established in Czechoslovakia in 1918,under Thomas Garrigue Masaryk as President. As a former professor of philosophy, at CharlesUniversity in Prague, he built the foundation of Czechoslovakian democracy on the historicalprinciples of Jan Hus’ search for the truth (1415), Jan Amos Komensky’s use of Science andHumanism (1630), and on the values of American democracy as he conceived it from multiplevisits to the United States and from the practical philosophy of his American wife. His majoreducational means was the use of science. He became a founder of political science. As presidenthe recognized, that democracy, as a state form, does not educate people, they educate themselvesthrough family, school, church, physician and life experience.In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, on the eve of the opening of John Hopkin’s Universi-ty Hospital, a young American scientist by the name John Whitridge Williams came to Prague,Vienna, and other Europeans cities for the purpose of studying scientific obstetrics. He believedin the power of the truth in the power of the truth equally as Masaryk did and used scienceuncompromisingly in his speciality. He became the founder of American scientific obstetrics. Hewas shy of political science and ethnic problems. There was no personal connection betweenMasaryk and Williams. In 1903, John Whitridge Williams published his review of European andAmerican obstetrics: he abolished the craft of obstetrics and worked the science of physiologyand pathology into the practice of obstetrics.For Czechoslovaks the political democracy coming out of America through Masaryk was attracti-ve, but of particular interest was native and personal democracy of Americans as a way of life.John Whitridge Williams’ book contributed to European families, even though only through ob-stetricians, the knowledge about American pioneering, optimism, humanism, and a sense of free-dom Williams considered the fetus as a patient and thought of education of the physician andpatient of equal and fundamental importance: the mother was to participate in the process andthe physician to understand the process. He himself understood feto-placental circulation, mater-nal metabolism, and the need of maternal participation on fetal development. He commandedphysicians’ respect of the patient and committed the obstetrician to the life long study of hispatients. He considered research inseparable from intelligent care, and his book a guide of howand what to study, not a manual of procedures.Williams’ greatest contribution to mankind was abolishing the craft of obstetrics and replacing itby sciences that brought to obstetrics humanism, selflessness, and knowledge. He was the firstphysician in the history of obstetrics who achieved a balance of science and humanism. Thesecond contribution, of equal importance, was his undertaking a scientific review of Europeanand American obstetrics which served the world as a window of the values of America’s pioneercivilization. It made obstetrics a scientific discipline, attracted innumerable new students abroad,and through them promoted American democracy in their relations with patients. Williams’ im-pact on European society was considerable. However, subtle at first, it was not included in theliterature. He did not participate personally in the establishment of democracy in Czechoslova-kia, but strengthened Masaryk’s teaching programs through those Czechoslovakian obstetricianswho adapted his scientific teachings and made him a model of American democracy as a view onlife.Masaryk himself had in his presidential emblem a sign, veritas vincit, and through it, he accom-plished twenty years of the most extraordinary democracy in the world. Williams on the sameprinciple contributed to European democracy by his scientific excellence and his opening of thewindow of the values of American pioneer civilizations. His contribution to democracy throughscience was unplanned and deserves revival and further study.

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