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Midwives and the Medicalization of Childbirth in Early Modern Italy

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Midwives and the Medicalization of Childbirth in Early Modern Italy View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE: MIDWIVES AND THE MEDICALIZATION OF CHILDBIRTH IN EARLY MODERN ITALY Jennifer F. Kosmin A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2014 Approved by: Melissa M. Bullard John J. Martin Valeria Finucci Karen Hagemann Konrad Jarausch ©2014 Jennifer F. Kosmin ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT JENNIFER F. KOSMIN: Embodied Knowledge: Midwives and the Medicalization of Childbirth in Eary Modern Italy (Under the direction of Melissa M. Bullard) In addition to being highly visible figures in the ritual life of Italian society, midwives were bearers of a unique expertise of the body and sexuality which granted them entrance into the legal and political worlds of early modern Italy. This dissertation examines the development of midwifery in three northern Italian states (Savoy, Lombardy, the Venetian Republic) from roughly 1600-1800, a period which spans both the earliest efforts by Church and State to regulate practice and the eventual institutionalization of midwifery education. This study aims to understand how both cultural meanings and the management of sexuality, gender, and reproduction were changing over the course of the early modern period. Because male birth attendants remained rare in Italy during this period, the development of Italian midwifery presents a unique perspective on the medicalization of childbirth in Europe. Although historians of medicine have tended to consider early maternity institutions as starting points in studies of the medicalization of childbirth, this project emphasizes the continuities between eighteenth- century institutions and earlier asylums for women which emerged, especially in Italy, in the era of the Counter Reformation. Throughout the eighteenth century, maternity hospitals and schools for midwives were therefore informed by impulses which were simultaneously scientific, religious, charitable, and disciplinary, defying any singular categorization. Furthermore, despite the fact that medical thought in the well-connected northern Italian cities of Turin, Milan, and Venice was significantly influenced by continental medical culture, I argue that these cities iii developed distinct, “Italian”, modes of thought with respect to the science and management of childbirth. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the generous support of a great number of people, and it is with great pleasure that I recognize their contributions. First and foremost, I am incredibly fortunate to have been the recipient of the tireless support, enthusiasm, and encouragement of my advisor, Melissa Bullard. I will be forever thankful for her guidance, careful reading of my work, and endless patience as this project developed into something quite different than initially envisioned. I am also especially grateful to John Martin and Valeria Finucci, who, in addition to their valuable suggestions, have shared their love for and intricate understanding of Italian culture and history at all stages of this project. I owe many thanks to my committee members, Karen Hagemann and Konrad Jarausch, for their valuable input on and stimulating discussion of many aspects of this dissertation. I am deeply indebted to a number of instituions that have generously supported the research for this project. The Social Science Research Council facilitated my first research trip to Turin in 2010 where the foundations of this project were laid. Since, then I have benefitted immeasurably from the support of the Fulbright Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for research in the Veneto, the Medieval and Early Modern Studies program at UNC, and UNC’s Royster Society of Fellows. My research in archives across northern Italy was facilitated and made most pleasurable by a number of talented and helpful researchers, archivists, and staffs. I would like to thank in particular the staffs of the Archivi di Stato of Turin, Milan, Venice, and Padua, as well as of the Archivo Storico Diocesano of Turin, the Archivio Storico Diocesano of Milan, the Archivo Comunale of Turin, and the Pinali Library for the History of v Medicine at the University of Padua. Gianpiero Viviano in Turin was both immensely helpful in my archival searches as well as a pleasure to talk with about history in general. Daniela Caffaratto in Turin was incredibly helpful in my study of the Ospedale Maggiore di San Giovanni Battista and wonderfully generous in introducing me to her father’s work on medicine in Piemonte. Marina Cimino at the University of Padua was a source of unending knowledge about midwifery and obstetrical texts published in Italy. In Milan, Flores Reggiani was most helpful and welcoming in letting me study materials in the archive of the Istituto provinciale di protezione e assistenza dell'infanzia di Milano. Lastly, I would like to thank my friends and family without whose love, encouragement, and laughter this journey would have been certainly less enjoyable if not impossible. Jamal Middlebrooks has been with me through the entire trip and I deeply value his intelligence, wit, and friendship. I have received wonderful feedback on various parts of this project from Brittany Lehman. To Adam Domby and Lexington Kosmin, I couldn’t imagine doing this without you. Finally, I could never thank my parents, Art and Kathy Kosmin, enough for their endless love and support – words simply fall short. To my sister, Melissa, I wish more than anything that you could read this. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS …………………………………………………………………………….. ix INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………. 1 CHAPTERS 1. The Regulation and Practice of Midwifery in Early Modern Italy………………………..….16 I. Ecclesaistical Regulation II. Secular Regulation III. Italian Midwives: A Profile 2. Textual Deliveries: Reading Early Modern Midwifery Manuals and Obstetrical Treatises ... 73 I. The Male Development of Midwifery Manuals: 16th-17th Centuries II. An Italian Midwifery Manual: Scipione Mercurio’s La Comare o Raccoglitrice (1596) III. Eighteenth-Century Obstetrical Texts and the Emergence of a Professional Discourse IV. Theological Embryology and the Cesarean Operation 3. Italy’s First Maternity Ward: Turin, 1728- 1761 ……………………………...…………… 127 I. Italy’s First Maternity Ward II. A School for Midwives III. Alternate Forms of Maternal Assistance: The Compagnia delle Puerpere 4. Milan and Enlightenment-Era Pro-Natalism, 1767-1796 …………………………………. 173 I. The Development of a School for Midwives in Milan’s Ospedale Maggiore II. The Science of Obstetrics: Instruction in the Milanese School, 1767-1796 III. With “Piety and Maternal Heart”: Maternal Assistance in Milan and the Quarto delle Balie IV. Beyond Milan: Provincial Centers for Midwifery Instruction in Austiran Lombardy 5. Training Midwives between Theory and Practice in Venice, 1770-1797…. …………….. 267 I. Formal Training for Midwives in the Serenissima II. The Terrafirma vii CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………… 306 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………...……………………………………………. 317 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACT Archivio Comunale, Turin ASDt Archivio Storico Diocesano di Torino AOSG Archivio Ospedale S.Giovanni, Turin AST, p.s. Archivio di Stato di Torino, prima sezione AST, s.r. Archivio di Stato, di Torino, sezioni reunite ASM Archivio di Stato di Milano ASDm Archivio Storico Diocesano di Milano IPPAI Archivio Storico dell'Istituto provinciale di protezione ed assistenza all'infanzia, Milan ASV Archivio di Stato di Venezia ASP Archivio di Stato di Padova ASTv Archivio di Stato di Treviso BMV Biblioteca Marciana, Venice ix INTRODUCTION Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the professionalization of medical practice and the extension of that practice into traditional spaces profoundly altered the ways in which childbirth was understood and embodied. Fundamental to these developments was the emergence of new childbirth spaces, techniques, and technologies. Scholars have often characterized the medicalization of childbirth in Europe and North America as a protracted struggle between men and women in which the knowledge and practice of traditional midwifery was rapidly eclipsed by masculine science. In Italy, however, this paradigm of exclusion is more complicated. Rather than maneuvering to usurp women’s place in the birthing room as in France or England, physicians and state officials in Italy aimed their efforts at professionalizing female midwives through new, formal courses of instruction. By the mid-eighteenth century a handful of hospitals incorporated small maternity wards staffed by midwives in conjunction with such training programs, thereby merging Enlightenment-era reform efforts with the new medical emphasis on clinical education. Childbirth in Italy thus remained a female guided event throughout the early modern period, though one which was increasingly subject to male supervision and a masculine scientific episteme. This dissertation explores the institutional development of the maternity hospital and midwifery school in eighteenth-century northern Italy. What was the impact of the gradual shift from traditional to medicalized midwifery on cultural understandings of and attitudes toward childbirth, sexuality, and the female body? Where possible I aim to reconstruct the social profile and individual
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