The Gynaeciorum libri, a compendium of ancient and contemporary texts on gynaecology, is the inspiration for this intensive exploration of the origins of a subfield of medicine. Focusing on its readers in the period from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, when men and women were in competition for control over childbirth, Helen King sheds new light on how the claim of female difference was shaped by specific social and cultural conditions.
Author(s): Helen King
Series: Women and Gender in the Early Modern World
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 228
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Towards Gynaecology
The Gynaeciorum libri
The significance of gynaecology
Authority over the womb
A ‘century of change’?
1 Prefacing Women: Owners and Users
Prefacing women
Owners and annotators
Treating menstrual disorders
Sterility and the uterine mole
2 Medical History and Obstetric Practice in William Smellie
Smellie vs Burton: haste, error and rivalry
The making of a man-midwife
Smellie and midwives
The laboratory of lying-in
Training men-midwives
Looking to the past
Using Hippocrates
Smellie’s sources
3 Guilty of ‘Male-practice’? Burton’s Attack on Smellie
Disputes in action
Languages
The lithopedion of Sens
The case of the ass’s urine
To cut or not to cut?
Beyond the wicker woman
The ‘noble instrument’
Avicenna
Albucasis
Ancient instruments
4 Delighting in a ‘Bit of Antiquity’: Sir James Young Simpson
Collecting the past
Defining gynaecology
Simpson and the classics
Performing the part both of man and woman: Simpson and gender
Those most bitter pains: justifying chloroform
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
