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Modelling Authority: Obstetrical Machines In The Instruction Of Midwives And Surgeons In Eighteenth-Century Italy, Jennifer Kosmin

Faculty Journal Articles

This article takes the commission of an elaborate and life-like obstetrical machine by the Italian midwifery instructor, Vincenzo Malacarne, in 1791 as a starting point for considering the ways that medical practitioners were renegotiating the relationship between the senses at the end of the eighteenth century. In particular, it focuses on the cultivation of touch as an authoritative and professionalised source of bodily knowledge. The article argues that Malacarne's obstetrical machine reflects an important moment of transition in the way medical practitioners were trained to interact with female patients, in which the manual exploration of a woman’s genitals was re-contextualised …