Why study 'Birth Through History'?
An introduction to the project by Valerie Worth
The TV series ‘Call the Midwife’ has given a huge impetus to public interest in developments in midwifery since the 1950s. At a study day in Oxford in May 2016, organised as part of this Knowledge Exchange Project, we were privileged to have Terri Coates, midwifery adviser to `Call the Midwife` speak to us about `Communicating the art of midwifery through a BBC period drama`.
My own research draws on information from the time of the earliest printed midwifery manuals in Europe (in the sixteenth century) through to the emergence of men-midwives (i.e. surgeons specialised in childbirth) around the turn of the 1700s. Working with healthcare professionals, archivists and historians, in `Birth Through History` I have been particularly interested in exploring the constants and changes, from the early modern period to the present day.
By adopting a historical lens, we can gain fresh insights into some of the recurrent debates in women’s healthcare and fetal medicine. With Janette Allotey (Chair of de Partu and former Lecturer in Midwifery, Manchester University) and Carly Randall (former Archivist of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists) I curated a poster exhibition in the Education Centre of the Royal College (2015-17). The selection of twelve posters featured some of the changing practices of childbirth. The exhibition was viewed, amongst others, by Foundation Year doctors attending a study day (November 2015) to help them to decide whether they wanted to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology.
I also had the opportunity to discuss the historical images with trainee midwives at Oxford Brookes University (November 2015).
What sparked my research in 'Birth Through History'?
In the course of general historical research on women in early modern France, I came to focus on the relationship between women and medicine in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly on what we would now term reproductive medicine. I was struck by the numerous references in literary works to pregnancies (revealed or hidden) and births (especially monstrous ones), and even to the mother’s breasts - glistening with milk-like pearls.
Yet I found a surprising absence of first-person accounts in either women’s memoirs or letters. While the mother’s body seemed to fascinate poets and writers of fiction, women themselves – even those who were literate - appeared reluctant to record their personal experiences in written form. Conversely, there is evidence to attest to the widespread tradition of oral exchanges between women, not least in the traditional gatherings of groups of all-women ‘gossips’ during a new mother’s lying-in period.
So to appreciate how the early modern period understood reproduction and birth, I turned to medical works by physicians, surgeons and several midwives, and found that here reproduction occupied a very significant place. In my book Les Traités d'obstétrique en langue française au seuil de la modernité (2007), I compiled a critical bibliography of some thirty works in French on the subject, spanning the period from the first translation of Euchaire Rösslin’s immensely popular birthing manual (1536) to the midwife Louise Bourgeois’s polemical defence of her delivery of the king’s sister-in-law (1627). My study included works by such famous figures as Ambroise Paré, Laurent Joubert and Jacques Guillemeau, who raised the question of the benefits and risks of publishing these works in French, rather than in Latin (which was still the accepted language for medical texts).
What particular aspects of 'Birth Through History' have led my research?
One main strand of my research has been individual ‘birthing tales’ within French medical texts and fiction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although some medical men [and the occasional female writers] choose to present only generic paradigms for both normal and abnormal pregnancies and births, other writers collect tales relating individual case histories. I have published a collection of these, together with comments and an English translation, at www.birthingtales.org. These tales clearly reveal the overlap between early modern medical texts and literary works of fiction. In contrast, today`s doctors and midwives are bound by very strict codes of professional confidentiality, whereas the women experiencing pregnancy and birth often share their experiences freely through on-line sites such as Mumsnet.
