Search results for "History of Obstetrics"

Old English byrððīnenu: the Anglo-Saxon midwife

2018

Midwives were clearly viewed as professionalized figures in the Mediterranean world of antiquity and late antiquity and they were responsible for women’s healthcare, such as gynecological and obstetrical needs. They were referred to in Roman law, admonished in Christian edicts and memorialized in statues and inscriptions. Their status is attested to by medical texts specifically intended for midwives’ use dating from at least the third century B.C. to the sixth century A.D. According to Green, professional midwives disappeared along with the slow disintegration of the urban environments that supported medical specialization and reemerged as a specialized profession only in the thirteenth ce…