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From 'The Help Of Grave And Modest Women' To 'The Care Of Men Of Sense': The Transition From Female Midwifery To Male Obstetrics In Early Modern England, Karen L. Smith Adams

Dissertations and Theses

Until the sixteenth century, childbirth in England was the exclusive domain of women and was orchestrated by the female midwife. By the end of the seventeenth century, university-educated and church-approved male physicians were systematically beginning to usurp the midwife's role in the lying-in room and to gradually assume authority and power over the process of childbirth. Ultimately doctordominated childbirth threatened, and in some places accomplished, the displacement of the midwife. No one factor was responsible for the shift in delivery room personnel nor was the transition from female midwives to male obstetricians a "natural" one. This thesis looks at three …