smart, exact and knowing," Epler 

 discovered. "She established her own art 

 of medicine and it worked." When Epler 

 asked how she had become such a 

 successful midwife, Mis' Bashi said 

 only, "Doctor, I had a good mom and 

 learnin' to work. My own mother wit 

 and being mindable to what a good 

 doctor was tellin' me made me fitten to 

 do it." 



Midwives such as Mis' 

 Bashi often moved into a 

 mother's home for days or 

 even weeks. Preterm labor 

 or a complicated pregnancy 

 required her to arrive at the 

 bedside early rather than 

 wait until contractions had 

 started, and she probably 

 stayed until the mother was 

 ready to care for the child 

 herself. "Her fee at first was 

 $2.50 for the care of mother 

 and babe," Epler wrote, 

 though "later this became $3 

 and now $10." 



Like much of the 

 historical record, Epler' s 

 National Geographic article 

 is vague about how she and 

 Mis' Bashi actually handled 

 deliveries. We can imagine 

 the pair's skill and ingenuity 

 from other nursing cases that 

 she describes in more detail. 

 When a fisher named 

 Nevada arrived with a 

 stingray tail embedded in his 

 leg, Epler had not yet 

 received her medical 

 instruments from 

 Kalamazoo. She and Mis' 

 Bashi improvised tools out of cut-down 

 lard and coffee cans, then rustled up 

 their own treatment out of turpentine 

 and coal oil, hot water and soap, and 

 Epler' s one bottle of Mercurochrome. 

 Stretching the patient across the kitchen 

 table, Epler cut away the stingray's tail, 

 aided, she said, by "Mis' Bashi' s 'mother 

 wit' and her nimble, clean hands." 



Epler witnessed the last days of 

 traditional childbirth: at home, low-tech, 

 under women's control, tended by a 



midwife. However, she didn't always 

 understand the community's handling of 

 childbirth. When she attended the eighth 

 delivery of a woman named Mrs. 

 Vienner, Epler observed that "a bevy of 

 silent, sitting women, useless and 

 immovable, lined the room and porch." 



This congregation of women 

 outside Vienner' s home was an island 



Old gravestones tell the poignant story of the dangers 

 once posed by childbirth and childhood disease. 



custom. The father and other men 

 withdrew from the home altogether. The 

 expecting mother's closest female 

 relatives and friends comforted her in 

 the birthing room, while community 

 women waited in silent vigil — 

 sometimes in prayer, sometimes just as 

 a quiet gesture of solidarity. I doubt the 

 women in labor considered them 

 "useless." As mothers themselves, they 

 reminded her that she too could make it 

 through the shadow of maternity. 



Although Epler failed to understand 

 some of the island's childbearing customs, 

 her medical skills seem to have been 

 appreciated. A few decades earlier, even 

 a Johns Hopkins-educated physician like 

 Epler would not have had much to offer 

 Mis' Bashi or Hatteras mothers. But by 

 the 1920s, obstetrical advances — 

 especially the use of anesthesia, new 

 procedures for suturing 

 perineal tears and a vigorous 

 appreciation for aseptic 

 delivery — had made 

 childbirth less perilous and 

 painful. At Hatteras, with no 

 hospital, Epler and Mis' 

 Bashi delivered babies with 

 elements of both traditional 

 midwifery and modern 

 medicine, but nationwide, 

 midwifery was gradually 

 falling out of favor as 

 childbearing moved into 

 hospitals. 



Epler left Hatteras in 

 October 1925 for the Phipps 

 Clinic in Baltimore. She 

 returned to the Outer Banks 

 to practice general medicine 

 in 1929 but found that the 

 "garish lure of 'civilization' 

 had taken its toll." She 

 praised the older islanders 

 like Mis' Bashi for "their 

 willingness to help human- 

 ity in every way" but railed 

 against the first automo- 

 biles, the clubs of wealthy 

 duck hunters and even the 

 young people's rage for 

 "high heels and rouge, and 

 picture shows." 

 By 1933, Epler had moved away 

 from Mis' Bashi and back to her child- 

 hood home in Illinois. For a few brief 

 years, however, the lives of these two 

 women crossed, leaving us an extraordi- 

 nary portrait of their arduous labors to 

 bring women and children out from under 

 the shadow of maternity. United by 

 mutual respect and a commitment to their 

 patients, a modern scientific physician 

 and a traditional healer brought the best 

 of old and new to the Outer Banks. □ 



COASTWATCH 23 



