PREGNANT WOMEN'S WELLBEING IN JANE SHARP'S "THE MIDWIVES' BOOK" (1671)

Women’s health, wellbeing, and medical conditions have always been at the centre of gendered debates concerning, among other things, who has the necessary knowledge and authority to discuss and provide advice about them. Of the many branches of medicine involved in these debates, midwifery certainly holds a prominent position: in particular, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these controversies saw the rivalry between midwives and the emerging men-midwives encapsulated in their own publications.

While men’s textbooks on midwifery were limited to the description of women’s anatomy and the discussion of the birth event itself (without taking into consideration what happened to women before, during, and after pregnancy), the midwives’ manuals offered a different point of view, that is, one of a skilled practitioner (despite the misogynist stereotypes) who could also share with her patients the same experience, thus having access to a kind of knowledge which went beyond the purely technical one.

This contribution deals in particular with Jane Sharp’s "The Midwives’ Book" (1671) and offers to focus precisely on an aspect often overlooked in men’s textbooks, that is, pregnant women’s wellbeing, be it physical and/or mental.

The analysis considers the creation of discourses related, for example, to factors helping the conception of a child, to easing labour, and to preventing diseases after childbirth. In the discussion, particular attention will be devoted to the peculiar connection between midwives and pregnant women, and to the references to professional and private experience used to back up such knowledge.

You may also like the following events from Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance - CSMBR:

• This Wednesday, 14th May, 02:00 pm, A HISTORY OF BRESTFEEDING. Its Iconography and Medical Importance in Pisa, Italy
• This month, 27th May, 03:00 pm, GALEN AND THE QUESTION OF METABOLISM. Body and Environment in Ancient Medicine in Pisa, Italy
• Next month, 10th June, 03:00 pm, MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND. What Can We Learn from Mass Biographies? in Pisa, Italy

Also check out other Health & Wellness events in Jensen Beach.