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To Conceive with Child Is the Earnest Desire If Not of All, Yet of Most Women": the Advancement of Prenatal Care and Childbirth in Early Modern England: 1500-1770

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To Conceive with Child Is the Earnest Desire If Not of All, Yet of Most Women Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2018 "To Conceive With Child is the Earnest Desire if Not of All, Yet of Most Women": The Advancement of Prenatal Care and Childbirth in Early Modern England: 1500-1770 Victoria E.C. Glover Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons, History of Gender Commons, History of Religion Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Obstetrics and Gynecology Commons, Social History Commons, and the Women's History Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5694 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i © Victoria Glover 2018 All Rights Reserved ii “To Conceive with Child is the Earnest Desire if Not of All, Yet of Most Women”: The Advancement of Prenatal Care and Childbirth in Early Modern England, 1500-1770 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. by Victoria E.C. Glover Master of Arts in Teaching Secondary History, Georgia Southern University, 2015 Bachelor of Arts in History, Georgia Southern University, 2013 Director: Dr. Brooke Newman, Associate Professor of History and Associate Director of the Humanities Research Center Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia November 30, 2018 iii Acknowledgement The author wishes to thank several people. Thank you to my husband Brian who has dealt with days and nights of me reading and writing for the past two years. I would also like to thank my parents for their encouragement and support. Thank you to my thesis advisor and mentor Dr. Brooke Newman who has been so helpful for the past year and half while I tackled a subject many would find unusual. Finally, thank you to all the students in the graduate program as they mean so much to me that I can’t really put it all into words. iv Table of Contents List of Illustrations. v Abstract . vi Introduction. 1 Chapter One Anatomy, Conception, and Barrenness . 19 Chapter Two Fetal Development, Antenatal Care, and Miscarriage . 56 Chapter Three Preparation for Labor, Natural and Unnatural Delivery, and Lying-In Period . .102 Conclusion . 158 Bibliography . 163 Vita . 170 v List of Illustrations Figure 1: James Wolveridge’s depiction of the initial formation of the fetus, Speculum Matricis Hybernicum, London, 1670 . 62 Figure 2: Depiction of male and female pelvic bones used to discount the theory regarding the separation of a woman’s pelvic bones during labor and delivery, The English Midwife, 1682..117 Figure 3: Birthing chair included in various midwifery manuals published in the early modern era, The English Midwife, 1682 . 121 Figure 4: Francois Mauriceau’s depiction of the removal of the secundine, or afterbirth, The Disease of Women with Child, 1672. .125 Figure 5: William Smellie-type obstetrical forceps from the Science Museum London . 136 vi Abstract “TO CONCEIVE WITH CHILD IS THE EARNEST DESIRE IF NOT OF ALL< YET OF MOST WOMEN”: THE ADDVANCEMENT OF PRENATAL CARE AN CHILDBIRTH IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND, 1500-1770 By Victoria E.C. Glover, Master of Arts A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2018 Director: Dr. Brooke Newman, Associate Professor of History and Associate Director of the Humanities Research Center This thesis analyzes medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. While there have been plenty of books written regarding social and religious changes in the reproductive process during the early modern era, there is a dearth of scholarly work focusing on the medical changes which took place in obstetrics over this period. Early modern England was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new fields and tools, and new or revived methods into published obstetrical manuals. As men became more prominent in the birthing chamber, instructions in the manuals began to address these men as well. Overall these changes were brought about by changes in the medical field along with changes in culture and religion and the emergence of print culture and rising literacy rates. 1 Introduction This thesis analyzes twenty-nine medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 in an attempt to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. Overall, this study seeks to show how English practices and traditions regarding conception, pregnancy, and childbirth developed and evolved in response to medical, scientific, and religious transformations that took place over the course of the early modern era. These include changing ideas regarding anatomy during the Renaissance (1300-1600), the creation of new medical fields and obstetrical tools such as embryology and obstetrical forceps during the Scientific Revolution (1550-1700), and the expanding role of men in the birthing chamber in the eighteenth century. Tracking midwifery manuals alongside the significant changes which occurred in the medical field between the sixteenth and mid- eighteenth centuries illuminates how long it took medical ideas concerning conception, pregnancy, and childbirth to reach the general public. Analysis of English midwifery manuals over the longue durée demonstrates what ideas were commonly held by physicians and midwives and what ideas were anomalies of their time. By focusing exclusively on published medical manuals written in the vernacular, this thesis offers insight into the evolution of prescriptive medical practices in England regarding female anatomy, conception, pregnancy, and the treatment of laboring mothers. While women may have deviated from the advice of midwives and physicians in their everyday lives, medical manuals grant modern readers access to the prescriptive world of early modern obstetrics. Although this advice may have been ignored, physicians’ prescriptions enable historians to track generally accepted medical practices over time. In the absence of an extensive collection of surviving early modern English women’s diaries and journals, medical manuals allow us to 2 understand how medicine relating to conception and childbirth changed over time in response to intellectual, religious, and scientific currents. Argument This study argues that the changes to medical knowledge, religion, and the practice of midwifery greatly affected the way in which the authors of midwifery manuals discussed conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. Because physicians had greater access to human bodies for dissection in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, they gained new knowledge concerning how the body functioned and what part each organ in the body played. As the field of anatomy progressed physicians discarded theories which had been held for millennia as their personal observations contradicted the writings of previous authors. This deeper investigation into the human form led authors to change their theories on the reproductive differences between men and women as well as the parts each gender played regarding the act of conception and its antithesis barrenness. During this same period the religious world of England was turned upside down when Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church and the pope in the 1530s in order to secure a legitimate male heir. This led to the creation of the Church of England, headed by the current king or queen of England. At the same time the Protestant Reformation from central Europe spread to England leading to the splintering of English Protestants into various factions. These breaks within English faith practices led to the rejection or modification of “popish” practices and the adoption of new practices by the end of the sixteenth century. Sixteenth-century religious upheavals affected all aspects of life including how women dealt with barrenness, the act of giving birth, and the return of new mothers to society through ritual purification. 3 Finally, the early modern era saw a dramatic change in the field of obstetrics and midwifery as a once female-dominated occupation was challenged by men who had better access to medical education that female midwives did not. These men also had access to newly-invented tools and improved practices, such as obstetrical forceps, which gave them the ability to preserve the lives of more infants and mothers who would have died in centuries past. The early modern era was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new tools such as obstetrical forceps, and new or revived methods such as podalic version into published obstetrical manuals. As men entered and became more prominent in the birthing chamber, instructions in the manuals were no longer addressed to women and midwives alone, but to male practitioners as well. These changes were brought about during the sixteenth,
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