Title Birth figures : early modern prints and the pregnant body / Rebecca Whiteley

Published Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2023

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Description 1 online resource (309 p.) Contents Introduction: picturing pregnancy -- Part I: Early printed birth figures (1540-1672). Using images in midwifery practice; Pluralistic images and the early modern body -- Part II: Birth figures as agents of change (1672-1751). Visual experiments; Visualizing touch and defining a professional persona -- Part III: The birth figure persists (1751-1774). Challenging the Hunterian hegemony -- Conclusion Summary The first full study of "birth figures," sets of illustrations which were widely reproduced in early modern books on childbirth and midwifery. Birth figures are printed images of the pregnant uterus, always shown in series, that depict the variety of ways in which a fetus can present for birth. Historian Rebecca Whiteley coined the term and here offers the first systematic analysis of the images' creation, use, and impact. Whiteley reveals their origins in ancient medicine and explores their inclusion in many medieval gynecological manuscripts, focusing on their explosion in printed midwifery and surgical books from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century in Western Europe. During this period, birth figures formed a key part of the visual culture of medicine and midwifery and were widely produced. They reflected and shaped how the pregnant body was known and treated. And by providing crucial bodily knowledge to midwives and surgeons, birth figures were also deeply entangled with wider cultural preoccupations with generation and creativity, female power and agency, knowledge and its dissemination, and even the condition of the human in the universe. Birth Figures studies how different kinds of people understood childbirth and engaged with midwifery manuals, from learned physicians to midwives to illiterate listeners. Rich and detailed, this vital history reveals the importance of birth figures in how midwifery was practiced and in how people, both medical professionals and lay readers, envisioned and understood the mysterious state of pregnancy Notes Description based on print version of record Subject Obstetrics -- Europe, Western -- History Midwifery -- Europe, Western -- History Childbirth in art. Pregnancy in art. Fetus in art. Medical illustration -- History Illustration of books -- Europe, Western -- 16th century Illustration of books -- Europe, Western -- 17th century Illustration of books -- Europe, Western -- 18th century Medicine and art -- Europe, Western -- History SCIENCE / General. Childbirth in art Fetus in art Illustration of books Medical illustration Medicine and art Midwifery Obstetrics Pregnancy in art History of medicine. Anatomy. Gynaecology & obstetrics. Science: general issues. Western Europe Genre/Form Electronic books History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780226823133 022682313X

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