The Wonders of Childbirth Giving Life between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period

List of Figures

Acknowledgements 

Chapter One: The Birth Scene 

1. A Story

2. Constructing the History of Childbirth: Textual Sources 

Chapter Two: ‘She Must Be of Good and Honest Behaviour’: The Midwife 

1. The Miraculously Healed by Christ in Swaddling Clothes

2. The Profile of Midwives: A Brief Overview

3. The Physical and Moral Qualities of Midwives. Were They Witches?

4. Midwives and the Nobility 

Chapter Three: Giving Birth 

1. Modesty and Shame

2. The Birthing Chair and Other Delivery Positions

3. Pain and Screaming

Chapter Four: Speeding up Childbirth: Objects, Rituals, and Formulae 

1. The Attractive Powers of Amulets

2. Words to Be “Eaten” and “Drunk”

3. The brieve

4. The Flesh of a Wolf, the Skin of a Snake, the Nail of a Donkey

5. Margaret and Other Saints

6. The Agnus Dei

7. ‘La vanité, l’illusion et la folie’:  Carmina and Amulets in the Early Modern Period 

Chapter Five: Difficult Births and Dramatic Episodes 

1. Saturn in Opposition: The time of Childbirth

2. Wine, Garlic, Onion, and Salt: How to Resuscitate the Newborn Baby

3. Unnatural Births

4. Brutal Procedures: Embryulcia and Embryotomy 

Chapter Six: The Long History of the Caesarean Section  

1. The ingenitus: Medieval Myths About Caesarean Section on Dead Women

2. ‘Let No One kill the Mother to Baptise the Baby’

3. Caesarean Section on Deceased Women in Medical Texts

4. Inheritance

5. The Miracle à répit

6. ‘A Single Experience Does Not Make a Science’. The “Real” Caesarean Section

7. Saving the Heir to a Dynasty

8. An Overview of the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

9. Wondrous and Miraculous Caesarean Sections

Chapter Seven: The Wonders of the Womb 

1. Fantastical Creatures from the Womb: Frogs, Owls, Rats, and Harpies

2. Giving Birth to a Monster

3. The Role of the Imagination in the Conception of Children

4. Leprous Children and Monstrous Children: The Power of Menstrual Blood

5. Twin Births

6. The Stone Baby

Chapter Eight: Female Concerns and Prophetic Signs: Pregnancy and the Birth of a Son

 1. Pregnant?

2. Generating a Son

3. Will It Be a Boy? Predictive Signs

4. The Umbilical Cord, Hair, and the Moon 

Chapter Nine: After Childbirth: Mother and Child 

1. Early Newborn Care

2. Feeding a Newborn

3. ‘And Fierce Hyrcanian Tigers Gave Thee Suck’: Milk as a Conduit of Essence

4. The Wet Nurse

5. And Finally… the Blessing of the Puerpera 

Bibliography

Index

Biography

Alessandra Foscati is Professor of the History of Medicine at UniCamillus– International University of Health and Medical Sciences in Rome, Italy. She obtained her PhD in medieval history at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her research focuses mainly on two areas: the history of childbirth between the Middle Ages and the early modern period, with particular attention to caesarean section, and the study of the lexicon of disease and its semantic transformations, primarily in the Middle Ages. She has published books, essays and articles in Italian and other languages.