1495 ORTOLF VON BAIERLAND, (Ortolf von Würzburg) ( – 1290)
Büchlein der schwangeren Frauen.
The first obstetrical book printed in the vernacular. Facsimile edition, Munich, 1910. Ortoloff also wrote the first German pharmacopoeia. See No. 1794. ISTC No. io00113000. Digital facsimile from the Bayerische Staat…
GMN 6137.1 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7668
1540 RÖSSLIN, Eucharius [RHODION; ROESSLIN] (1470 – 1526)
The byrth of mankynde.
The first English treatise on midwifery, translated by Richard Jonas from the 1532 Latin translation by Roesslin the Younger (De partu hominis) of Roesslin's work (1513). The 1540 English edition was illustrated with …
GMN 6139 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7681
1554 RUF, Jacob [RUEFF; RÜFF; RUOFF] (1500 – 1558)
Ein schön lustig Trostbüchle von den Empfengknussen und Geburten der Menschen…
An improved version of Rösslin’s Swangern frawen. This contains the first true anatomical pictures in an obstetrics book. Rueff described smooth-edged forceps for delivery of a live baby, preceding Chamberlen, and a t…
GMN 463 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7685
1566 GESNER, Conrad [Konrad Gessner] (1516 – 1565); WOLFF, Caspar [WOLF] (1525 – 1601); MUSCIO [MUSTIO; MOSCHION] (500 – )
Moschionos Peri gynaikeion pathon, id est…De morbis muliebribus liber unus; cum CONARDI GESNERI… scholiis & emendationibus nun primum editus opera ac studio CASPARI WOLPHII.
The earliest text specifically for midwives, based on the teachings of Soranus, the greatest obstetrical writer of antiquity. Muscio was a pupil of Soranus. His book, the earliest copy of which is a manuscript dating …
GMN 6136 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/8618
1573 LONITZER, Adam (Lonicer) (1528 – 1586)
Reformation oder Ordnung für die Hebammen.
Legislation governing the practice of midwifery was introduced in the city of Frankfurt in 1573, Digital facsimile from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek at this link.
GMN 6143 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7689
1609 BOURGEOIS, Louise [or Louise Boursier or Louise Bourgeois or Louyse Bourgeous] (1563 – 1636)
Observations diverses sur la sterilité, perte de fruict, foecondité, accouchements, et maladies des femmes, et enfants nouveaux naiz.
The first book on obstetrics published by a midwife. Louise Bourgeois was accoucheuse to the French court. She was one of the pioneers of scientific midwifery; her Observations was the vade mecum of contemporary midwi…
GMN 6145 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7698
1671 SHARP, Jane (1625 – )
The midwives book: or the whole art of midwifery discovered.
The first book written by an English midwife. Sharp was the most accomplished midwife of 17th-century England. Scholarly, extensively annotated edition edited by Jane Hobby, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press,…
GMN 6156.1 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7728
1690 SIEGEMUNDIN, Justine [DITTRICHIN] (1650 – 1705)
Die Chur-Brandenburgische Hoff-Wehe-Mutter.
With Mauriceau, Justine Siegemundin was responsible for introducing the practice of puncturing the amniotic sac to arrest hemorrhage in placenta praevia. She was midwife to the Court of the Elector of Brandenburg, and…
GMN 6149 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7712
1733 CHAPMAN, Edmund (1680 – 1756)
An essay on the improvement of midwifery.
Gives the first published account of the forceps, kept secret by the Chamberlen family for generations. Chapman was the second person in England to teach midwifery publicly. The first edition of his book was not illus…
GMN 6156.2 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7730
1759 COUDRAY, Angélique Marguerite Le Boursier du (1712 – 1794)
Abregé de l'art des accouchements, dans lequel on donne les préceptes nécessaires pour le mettre heureusement en pratique, et auquel on a joint plusieurs observations intéressantes sur des cas singuliers.
After ten years as a midwife in Paris, Madame du Coudray was hired by King Louis XV to travel across France to better train rural midwives.There were political motivations for this; Louis wanted to boost a “declining”…
GMN 6848 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/9012
1812 BOIVIN, Marie Anne Victoire (1773 – 1841)
Mémorial de l’art des accouchements.
Mme Boivin was one of the most famous of the Paris midwives. She improved the speculum and wrote intelligently on hydatidiform mole.
GMN 6165 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7752
1821 –1825 DUGÈS, Antoine Louis (1798 – 1838); LACHAPELLE, Marie-Louise (1769 – 1821)
Pratique des accouchemens…par Marie Louise La Chapelle. Publiés par Antoine Dugès. 3 vols.
Mme La Chapelle was a famous midwife and a colleague of Baudelocque. She supervised 5,000 deliveries and her vast experience enabled her to write her book. She reduced the 94 theoretical presentations suggested by Bau…
GMN 6170 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7762
1827 BOIVIN, Marie Anne Victoire (1773 – 1841)
Nouvelles recherches sur l’origine, la nature et le traitement de la mole vésiculaire ou grossesse hydatique.
Classic description of hydatidiform mole.
GMN 6172 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/7766
1834 DELACOUX, Alexis
Biographie des sages-femmes célèbres, anciennes, modernes et contemporaines. Avec 20 portraits.
Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.
GMN 11151 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/13348
1872 AVELING, James Hobson (1828 – 1892)
English midwives.
Reprinted with biographical sketch by J. L. Thornton, London, 1967.
GMN 6282 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/8007
1964 CUTTER, Irving Samuel (1875 – 1945); VIETS, Henry Rouse (1890 – 1969)
A short history of midwifery.
Supplemented reprint of Cutter's "Historical sketch of the development of midwifery and gynecology," Obstetrics and Gynecology, edited by Arthur H. Curtis, I, 4-194 (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1933).
GMN 9535 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/11721
1967 RADCLIFFE, Walter
Milestones in midwifery.
Reprinted with No. 6311, San Francisco, Norman Publishing, 1989.
GMN 6311.5 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/8058
1977 WERTZ, Richard W. (1933 – ); WERTZ, Dorothy C.
A history of childbirth in America.
Expanded edition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
GMN 12484 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14717
1977 DONNISON, Jean
Midwives and medical men: A history of inter-professional rivalries and women's rights.
GMN 12554 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14792
1981 ANONYMOUS; ROWLAND, Beryl Winnifred (1918 – 2003)
Medieval woman's guide to health. The first English gynecological handbook. Middle English text, with introduction and modern English translation by Beryl Rowland.
This 15th century manuscript (British Library Sloan 2463) predates by about a century The byrth of mankynde, previously considered the first work on the subject.
GMN 6981 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/9147
1986 LEAVITT, Judith Walzer (1940 – )
Brought to bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950.
Focuses on the traditional woman-centered home-birthing practices, their replacement by male doctors, and the movement from the home to the hospital. She explains that childbearing women and their physicians gradually…
GMN 8217 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10393
1990 ULRICH, Laurel Thatcher (1938 – ); BALLARD, Martha Moore (1735 – 1812)
A midwife's tale. The life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary 1785-1812.
Between 1785 and 1812 a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine.
GMN 7883 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10055
1995 BORST, Charlotte G.
Catching babies: The professionalization of childbirth, 1870-1920.
Concerns the transition in the early 20th century in the United States from women midwives delivering most babies to professional obstetricians--mostly men--delivering almost all babies by the 1950s. It researches why…
GMN 11023 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/13219
1995 WILSON, Adrian
The making of man-midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770.
"In England in the seventeenth century, childbirth was the province of women. The midwife ran the birth, helped by female "gossips"; men, including the doctors of the day, were excluded both from the delivery and from…
GMN 12022 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14230
1998 FRASER, Gertrude Jacinta
African American midwifery in the South: Dialogues of birth, race, and memory.
GMN 12553 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14791
1999 BANKS, Amanda Carson (1965 – )
Birth chairs, midwives and medicine.
GMN 11632 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/13832
2002 GREEN, Monica Helen; TROTA OF SALERNO, (Trotula) (1150 – )
The Trotula: A medieval compendium of women's medicine, edited and translated by Monica H. Green.
A new translation of a new edition of the texts based on collation of 9 MSS from the second half of the 13th or early 14th century. "The Trotula was the most influential compendium on women's medicine in medieval Euro…
GMN 8577 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10754
2005 SMITH, Susan L.
Japanese American midwives: Culture, community, and health politics, 1880-1950.
GMN 10535 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12728
2006 SCHWARTZ, Marie Jenkins (1946 – )
Birthing a slave: Motherhood and medicine in the Antebellum South.
GMN 8090 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10266
2006 GREEN, Monica Helen; GILBERTUS ANGLICUS, (Gilbert of England) (1180 – 1250); MOONEY, Linne R. (1949 – ); TAVORMINA, Mary Teresa (1951 – )
Monica H. Green & Linne R. Mooney: Gilbertus Anglicus, "The Sickness of Women," IN: Sex, Aging and Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: MS Trinity College Cambridge R.14.52, Its Language, Scribe, and Texts. Edited by M. Teresa Tavormina. Vol. 2., pp. 455-568.
"Gilbertus's Compendium medicinae was translated into Middle English in the early 15th century.[4] The gynecological and obstetrical portions of that translation were soon excerpted and circulated widely as an indepen…
GMN 8366 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10542
2006 ETTINGER, Laura E.
Nurse-midwifery: The birth of a new American profession.
GMN 9934 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12122
2007 WOLFF, Caspar [WOLF] (1525 – 1601); KING, Helen (1957 – )
Midwifery, obstetrics and the rise of gynaecology: The uses of a sixteenth century compendium.
The compendium that King studied is Caspar Wolff's Gynaeciorum (1566, 1586-1588; Nos. 6011 and 6022). She concentrated on its reception, looking at a range of different uses of the book in the history of medicine from…
GMN 8481 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/10658
2008 MACDONALD, Margaret
At work in the field of birth: Midwifery narratives of nature, tradition, and home.
",,, an ethnographic study of midwifery in Canada in the wake of its historic transition from the margins as a grassroots social movement devoted to low-tech, woman-centered care to a regulated profession within the p…
GMN 12555 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14793
2013 WILSON, Adrian
Ritual and conflict: The social relations of childbirth in early modern England.
"This book places childbirth in early-modern England within a wider network of social institutions and relationships. Starting with illegitimacy - the violation of the marital norm - it proceeds through marriage to th…
GMN 12023 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/14231
2016 BURST, Helen Varney; THOMPSON, Joyce E.
A history of midwifery in the United States: The midwife said fear not.
GMN 10419 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/12612
2021 KLEIN, Wendy
Coming home: How midwives changed birth.
GMN 14318 · https://historyofmedicine.com/id/16643
