Joseph DeLee

Joseph Bolivar DeLee (October 28, 1869 – April 2, 1942) was an American physician who became known as the father of modern obstetrics. DeLee founded the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, where he introduced the first portable infant incubator. Early in his career, he was associated with the medical school at Northwestern University. After 1929, he was employed by the medical school at the University of Chicago.

An early proponent of hygienic standards during childbirth, DeLee even advocated for the construction of separate hospital buildings for labor and delivery. He was an influential figure in the discussion of whether childbirth required medical interventions to ensure a healthy mother and baby; in 1920, he proposed a standardized, invasive approach to childbirth known as the "prophylactic forceps operation". DeLee believed that mechanical intervention (such as forceps delivery) could prevent the poor outcomes that sometimes resulted from childbirth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His advocacy of such active techniques is sometimes blamed for the rise in mechanical interventions during childbirth.

DeLee pioneered medical filmmaking as a teaching tool in medicine and he invented a device used for several decades to suction the airways of newly born infants. After becoming an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago in 1935, DeLee was featured on a Time magazine cover the next year. He died in 1942, but his systematic approach to childbirth continued to influence medical practice through the baby boom. An endowed chair in DeLee's name was established at the University of Chicago a few years after he died.