Recently, I had the pleasure of writing an article for the FWSA blog. Their theme for August's posts was groundbreaking women or feminists, and so I chose to write an article on Jane Sharp - the groundbreaking seventeenth-century midwife who wrote and published The Midwives Book.
If you didn't see the lovely tweets the the FWSA's Twitter account (@FWSAuk) posted about it, or simply would like to have a read of it, please click below and check it out!
http://fwsablog.org.uk/2013/08/23/mrs-jane-sharp-a-pioneering-midwife-discovered/
However, if nineteenth-century literature is more your thing, there is also a brilliant new post by Lynn Shepherd that has just been added entitled 'Was Mary Shelley a feminist?':
http://fwsablog.org.uk/2013/08/26/wasmaryshelleyafeminist/
Showing posts with label birth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birth. Show all posts
Thursday, 29 August 2013
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Birth, babies and midwives
In light of the birth of the Royal baby on Monday and the newly breaking news that he will go by the name of George Alexander Louis, I thought that now is a particularly apt time to reflect on how our ideas, and indeed experiences, of birth have changed (or not, as the case may be!) over the centuries from the early-modern period.
Much medical and gynecological knowledge available in the seventeenth-century stemmed from translations of classical sources, including Galen and Hippocrates. In a culture dominated by male translations and reflections on these works, such as those of Nicholas Culpeper, Jane Sharp's achievement in The Midwives Book (1671) is perhaps one of the most remarkable in terms of helping our understanding of labour and birth in the seventeenth century. Though her treatise is an amalgamation of voices since she essentially cuts and pastes sections from other midwifery manuals and classical sources, her own voice and tone is often unmistakable.
Though midwives (thankfully?!) do not now 'annoint [their] hands with Oyl of Lillies, and the Womans Secrets' (p. 153) and instead favour latex gloves for internal examinations, much of what I have transcribed below certainly still has echoes with the modern practice of midwifery.
In Book IV of her text, Sharp sets out 'Rules for Women that are come to their Labour':
- 'When the Patient feels her Throws coming she should walk easily in her Chamber, and then again lye down, keep her self warm, rest her self and then stir again, till she feels the waters coming down and the womb to open; let her not lye long a bed, yet she may lye sometimes and sleep to strengthen her, and to abate pain' (p. 145).
- 'Take notice that all women do not keep the same posture in their delivery; some lye in their beds, being very weak, some sit in a stool or chair, or rest upon the side of the bed, held by other women that come to the Labor' (p. 153).
- 'The danger were much to force delivery, because when the woman hath laboured sore, if she rest not a while, she will not be able presently to endure it, her strength being spent before' (p. 156).
As we can see from these excerpts, though our medical knowledge surrounding labour and its complexities has of course changed dramatically, some of this most basic, yet credible, advice for a woman giving birth is really not so different to what mothers are told today.
Whilst here I have spoken about the intrapartum element of childbirth, if you are interested in what Sharp recommends for the postpartum care of new mothers, I would definitely recommend that you head over and have a read of Jennifer Evans's blog on this very subject! Take a look at it here: http://earlymodernmedicine.com/beyond-birth/
1. Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book, ed. by Elaine Hobby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. Frontispiece image taken from the electronic edition of The Midwives Book on EEBO.
3. An engraving of a pregnant woman on a birthing stool, surrounded by her midwife and gossips. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449803/
© Jenna Townend 2013
Though midwives (thankfully?!) do not now 'annoint [their] hands with Oyl of Lillies, and the Womans Secrets' (p. 153) and instead favour latex gloves for internal examinations, much of what I have transcribed below certainly still has echoes with the modern practice of midwifery.
In Book IV of her text, Sharp sets out 'Rules for Women that are come to their Labour':
- 'When the Patient feels her Throws coming she should walk easily in her Chamber, and then again lye down, keep her self warm, rest her self and then stir again, till she feels the waters coming down and the womb to open; let her not lye long a bed, yet she may lye sometimes and sleep to strengthen her, and to abate pain' (p. 145).
- 'Take notice that all women do not keep the same posture in their delivery; some lye in their beds, being very weak, some sit in a stool or chair, or rest upon the side of the bed, held by other women that come to the Labor' (p. 153).
- 'The danger were much to force delivery, because when the woman hath laboured sore, if she rest not a while, she will not be able presently to endure it, her strength being spent before' (p. 156).
As we can see from these excerpts, though our medical knowledge surrounding labour and its complexities has of course changed dramatically, some of this most basic, yet credible, advice for a woman giving birth is really not so different to what mothers are told today.
Whilst here I have spoken about the intrapartum element of childbirth, if you are interested in what Sharp recommends for the postpartum care of new mothers, I would definitely recommend that you head over and have a read of Jennifer Evans's blog on this very subject! Take a look at it here: http://earlymodernmedicine.com/beyond-birth/
1. Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book, ed. by Elaine Hobby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. Frontispiece image taken from the electronic edition of The Midwives Book on EEBO.
3. An engraving of a pregnant woman on a birthing stool, surrounded by her midwife and gossips. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449803/
© Jenna Townend 2013
Friday, 7 June 2013
Monstrous births
Today I thought I would do a quick post on something that I have been doing a little bit of research on this week: monstrous births in the seventeenth century. In this post, I have brought together two different sources that I have come across: The Workes of
that famous Chirugion Ambrose Parey (1649) and Jane Sharp's The Midwives
Book: or the whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (1671). I think these texts make for a nice comparison on this topic, since the relevant section of Parey's work is focused upon largely anecdotal accounts of monstrous births, whereas Sharp's does not include any such figures or diagrams, and instead focuses solely upon explaining the causes of monstrous births through science rather than hearsay.
What I think this difference in approach reveals, albeit subtly, is that Sharp is far keener (unlike other places in Parey's text) to avoid lying the blame for a monstrous birth solely at the door of the mother. Instead, she assigns a portion of blame to the father and, perhaps most surprisingly, avoids accounting for the birth's occurrence solely by the means of astrology or religion. By early modern necessity, and to avoid what could be some extremely uncomfortable criticism, she does concede that 'we must not exclude the Divine vengeance' (see extract below) in accounting for a monstrous birth, but in the latter half of this sentence goes on to reveal her evident skepticism about relying upon it entirely as a way of explaining this natural phenomena.
Below I have included several excerpts which I think best show this contrast in gendered approaches to monstrous births in Parey's and Sharp's texts. As ever, I have preserved the early modern spelling and capitalization of the two texts, both of which can be found on EEBO.
What I think this difference in approach reveals, albeit subtly, is that Sharp is far keener (unlike other places in Parey's text) to avoid lying the blame for a monstrous birth solely at the door of the mother. Instead, she assigns a portion of blame to the father and, perhaps most surprisingly, avoids accounting for the birth's occurrence solely by the means of astrology or religion. By early modern necessity, and to avoid what could be some extremely uncomfortable criticism, she does concede that 'we must not exclude the Divine vengeance' (see extract below) in accounting for a monstrous birth, but in the latter half of this sentence goes on to reveal her evident skepticism about relying upon it entirely as a way of explaining this natural phenomena.
Below I have included several excerpts which I think best show this contrast in gendered approaches to monstrous births in Parey's and Sharp's texts. As ever, I have preserved the early modern spelling and capitalization of the two texts, both of which can be found on EEBO.
The Workes of
that famous Chirugion Ambrose Parey (1649):
- ‘Dorothie an
Italian had twentie children at two births; at the first nine, and at the
second eleve, and that shee was so big, that shee was forced to bear up her
bellie, which laie upon her knees, with a broad and large scarf tied about her
neck, as you may see by this figure’ (p. 655).
- ‘In the year
of our Lord 1570 … at Paris … these two infants were born, differing in sex,
with that shape of bodie that you see here expressed in the figure’ (p. 652).
‘In the year
1530, there was a man to bee seen at Paris, out of whose bellie another,
perfect in all his members except head, hanged forth as if it had been grafted
there. The man was fortie years old, and hee carried the other implanted or
growing out of him, in his arms, with such admiration to the beholders, that
manie ran verie earnestly to see him’ (p. 650).
The Midwives
Book: or the whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (1671):
‘Of the
causes of Monstrous Conceptions’
- ‘What should
be the causes of Monstrous Conceptions hath troubled many great Learned men.
Alcabitius saith, if the Moon be in some Degrees when the child is conceived,
it will be a Monster. Astrologers they seeke the cause in the stars, but
Ministers refer it to the just judgements of God, they do not condemn the
Parent or the Child in such cases, but take our blessed Saviours answer to his
Disciples, who askt him, who sinned the
Parent or the Child, that he was born blind? Our Saviour replyed, neither he nor his Parents, but that the
Judgements of God might be made manifest in him. In all such cases, we must
not exclude the Divine vengeance; yet all these errors of Nature as to the
Instrumental causes are either from the material or efficient cause of procreation’
(p. 116).
- 'The matter is
the seed, which may fail three several wayes, either when it is too much, and
then the members are larger, or more than they should be, or too little, and
then there will be some part or the whole too little, or else the seed of both
sexes is ill mixed, as of men or women with beasts and certainly it is likely
that no such creatures are born but by unnatural mixtures, yet God can punish
the world with such grievous punishments, and that justly for our sins’ (pp.
116-17).
- 'But the
efficient cause of Monsters, is either from the forming faculty in the Seed, or
else the strength of imagination joined with it; add to these the menstrous
blood and the disposition of the Matrix; sometimes the mother is frighted or
conceives wonders, or longs strangely for things not to be had, and the child
is markd accordingly by it’ (pp. 117-18).
1. Ambrose Parey, The Workes of that famous Chirugion Ambrose Parey (1649), in EEBO.
2. Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book: or the whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (1671), in EEBO.
© Jenna Townend 2013
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