Tag: childbirth

The next seminar in the 2017–18 History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series takes place on Tuesday 24 October. Speaker: Dr Benedetta Lomi (University of Bristol), ‘The uses of ox bezoar in pre-modern Japan in ritual and medical practices’ This paper focuses on the therapeutic… Continue reading

Galenic and Hippocratic medical traditions did not see all bodies as the same. Indeed, recent work by Hannah Newton has shown that early modern physicians treated and perceived children as ‘physiologically distinct’ from adults. Children, including infants, were moist, warm… Continue reading

Wellcome MS. 632 may be the only surviving ‘birth girdle’ in England that was actually used during childbirth. This parchment roll survives as a rare artefact from a time when women, who could afford it, gave birth in well-furnished darkened… Continue reading

The second seminar in the 2015–16 History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar Series takes place on Tuesday 27th October. Speaker: Dr Gabriella Zuccolin (University of Cambridge) Women’s medicine between script and print, c. 1450–1600 Abstract: By 1600 only a few gynaecological texts written in Latin… Continue reading

Known as ‘The scholar’, Louise Bourgeois Boursier (1563–1636) was a recognised midwife within the 17th century French court. The trials and tribulations of her life illustrate the marginal position of female midwives in medicine at the time. Despite this, Bourgeois… Continue reading

The newly-catalogued National Childbirth Trust (NCT) archive, containing over 270 boxes of rich archive material, brings to life the history of childbirth and maternity care from the post-war period to the present day. The archive explores how women responded to… Continue reading

An item for knitting enthusiasts has recently been acquired by the Library as part of the papers of The Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Women’s Health (ACPWH). The matter-of-factly titled How to Make a ‘Knitted Uterus’ for Teaching is a… Continue reading

The arrival of a royal baby was the subject of a massive painting exhibited in Paris in 1827 by a young and then little-known painter, Eugène Devéria (1805-1865). The subject was the birth of the future king Henri IV of… Continue reading

Your children and you is the name of a film made by the Ministry of Information in 1946 and also the title of a new BFI DVD  made in partnership with the Wellcome Library with 15 films about pregnancy, birth,… Continue reading

The Society of Antiquaries of London is holding a series of public lectures which are free and open to all. Of the five lectures between September 2012 and May 2013,  the first, on 18 September 2012, was on the use… Continue reading