Eighteenth-Century British Midwifery, Part II

Scholars of the British Enlightenment who study obstetrical history traditionally focus on the rise of the male-midwife and competition between the sexes. This set comprises pamphlets, treatises, lectures for midwifery students, texts on the establishment of lying-in hospitals, and catalogues of obstetrical apparatuses collected by male-midwives.

The volumes reviewed here are the first four of a projected twelve volume series reproducing primary source materials for the history of midwifery and obstetrics in Britain between 1650 and 1800, focusing mainly on the eighteenth century. The volumes reviewed are well-made, pleasant to hold, bound in signatures, and printed on high-quality, acid free paper meeting American National Standards for the permanence of paper for printed library materials. They are designed as reference works that are A"built to last.A"The collection is not a comprehensive reproduction of all known midwifery and obstetric texts from this period; rather, it is an extensive but judicious selection of works that tends to focus on less accessible and lesser-known items, omitting those that have been reproduced in more accessible modern editions.Thus, Percival Willughby's Observations in Midwifery (1657), Jane Sharpe's The Midwives' Book: Or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered (1671), and the obstetrical treatises and beautifully illustrated anatomical tables of William Smellie (among others) have been left out of the collection, but this should not be problematic for the serious student of early British midwifery and obstetric practice who can easily locate originals or recent reproductions of these famous works elsewhere.The first four volumes of this series are a delight for the sociocultural critic or medical historian of the eighteenth century, who can look forward with much anticipation to the appearance of the next eight volumes. These books should be part of every respectable library dealing with the history of medicine in general and of midwifery or obstetrics in particular.