A new online feature on George Spratt’s Obstetrical Tables (1833) by Dr Rebecca Whiteley
Dr Rebecca Whiteley writes, ‘By studying Spratt’s tables alongside comic and satirical mobile prints, obscene and pornographic prints, and “fine art” nudes, this article demonstrates how medical images can be addressed as rich and complex resources for histories that are medical, visual, and cultural’.
Brief Excursion: A visit to a maternity hospital – University College Hospital London circa 1953
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A time when cookery classes were on offer in the antenatal clinic and it was novel for fathers to attend births…BBC archive sound recording
Sixteenth Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine
Doctors v. Midwives: Caribbean Medical Encounters in the Age of Pronatal Abolition
Dr Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins University)
11 February 2021
4pm -5:30pm (Cambridge, UK)
Zoom meeting (please click link here to register) : Cost free
Sixteenth Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine
Doctors v. Midwives: Caribbean Medical Encounters in the Age of Pronatal Abolition
Dr Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins University)
11 February 2021
4pm -5:30pm (Cambridge, UK)
Zoom meeting (please click link here to register) : Cost free
A funded PhD studentship: ‘Public Understandings of Fertility, Pregnancy or Post-Natal Health: A Cultural History’
The topic is Public Understandings of Fertility, Pregnancy or Post-Natal Health: A Cultural History; the supervision is split between Birkbeck’s School of Arts and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Students are asked to define their project, specifying a period of history, and a specific health topic within maternity health, broadly conceived.
Stories from inside the Wellcome collection
There are several short illustrated historical features relating to birth, imaging the fetus and contraception on the Wellcome Collection website. Today’s new feature called Testimonies of Birth is about birth in the 1980s.
Please contact the Book Reviews Editor if you would like to volunteer to review this new book for De Partu
Scottish Society of the History of Medicine Symposium (12–13 March 2021)
The Scottish Society of the History of Medicine will be holding a special symposium on “Teaching anatomy from Classical to modern times” – Friday 12th and Saturday 13th March 2021.
Download the brochure and registration form.
Introduction
This two day symposium is being organised by the Scottish Society of the History of Medicine, in association with the British Society for the History of Medicine and the History Society of the Royal Society of Medicine. The aim is to explore the development of anatomy teaching from the earliest times to the present day.
Presentations will cover the ways in which anatomical knowledge has been acquired, portrayed and taught. We will examine the evolution of techniques used in the teaching of anatomy through the ages and its relevance not only to surgery and medicine, but also to art and society in general.
The programme includes keynote lectures, invited speakers and short papers. We welcome short papers from a range of perspectives including historical, social, cultural and modern innovations.
Symposium Topics
- The rise and fall of comparative anatomy
- Cadaveric model
- Wax and paper models
- Anatomy textbooks
- The rise and fall of the private anatomy schools
- The role of anatomy museums
- Modern technologies
- Anatomy in art
- Leonardo’s anatomy
- Anatomy potpourri: Humour/mnemonics/cartoons etc.
Venue
Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Nicolson Street
Edinburgh
EH8 9DW
Have you read this years book review selection in the menu above?
The sixth book review of 2020, is of an historical novel, The Gossip’s Choice by Sara Read.
Interesting paper ‘Reviewing the Womb’
In the current issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Dunja Begovi, Elizabeth Chloe Romanis and Alexandra Mullock suggest in an open access article ‘Reviewing the womb‘ that women’s reproductive freedom is under threat in many ways as the uterus becomes more accessible and amenable to medical management. It discusses some of the associated ethical and legal dangers which have emerged from developments in reproductive technology, and reflects on the historical notions of woman as the (sometimes incompetent) vessel for the nurturing of the male seed, where the focus lies on the fruit of the womb, on the fetus rather than the mother.
Free access to digital records at the National Archives…
For a limited period only, just register to use the archives. The process takes less than five minutes.
Mary Toft in eighteenth-century England…
Whether or not you have read The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder, reviewed for De Partu by Dr Ashleigh Blackwood, you may enjoy listening to an interview with the author, Professor Karen Harvey, who asks why on earth would a woman wish to pretend to give birth to rabbits…how could it be true …and why would contemporary medical men appear to believe this and investigate it?
The interview is from an ‘History Extra’ podcast for BBC History Magazine.
New book reviews
Reviews of the following titles are now available on the Book Reviews page:
Lara Freidenfels (2020)
The myth of the perfect pregnancy: A history of miscarriage in America
Anja Katharina Peters (2020)
Nanna Conti (1881-1951): Eine Biographie der Reichshebammenführerin
[English abstract]
Karen Harvey (2020)
The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder: Mary Toft and Eighteenth-Century England
Karen Hearn (2020)
Portraying Pregnancy: from Holbein to Social Media
A report of the symposium Aiding Upright Births Throughout History, held in Newark on 28th February 2020.