An Essay on the Means of Lessening Pain, and Facilitating Certain Cases of Difficult Parturition.

American physician William Potts Dewees was , best known for his work in obstetrics, being described in American Medical Biographies as a "Philadelphian obstetrician [that] was so famous that no parturient woman of the time considered herself safe in other hands." Dewees received a Bachelor of Medicine and in 1806 an M.D. from the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he would become Professor of Obstetrics, and Chair of Obstetrics from 1834 to 1841. In 1819, Dewees was elected to the American Philosophical Society.