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This book provides an introduction to the sociological study of midwifery. The readings have been selected to highlight the interplay between midwifery and medicine, reflecting the medicalization of childbirth. It highlights the major themes in both a historical and a current context, as well as western and non-western societies. Two major themes underlie the organization of this book: that the conception of midwifery must be broadened to encompass a sociological perspective; and that the ongoing trend toward the medicalization of midwifery is crucial to an understanding of the historical, current, and future status of midwifery. By medicalization of childbirth and midwifery the author mean the increasing tendency for women to prefer a hospital delivery to a home delivery, the increasing trend toward the use of technology and clinical intervention in childbirth, and the determination of medical practitioners to confine the role played by midwives in pregnancy and childbirth, if any, to a purely subordinate one.
This intriguing book by Joel Eigen is the first systematic investigation of the evolution of medical testimony in British insanity trials from its beginnings in 1760 to 1843, when the Insanity Rules were formulated during the trial of Daniel McNaughtan. Based on verbatim testimony of courtroom participants - the ordinary as well as the notorious - the book shows how the conception of madness changed over time, how ambitious defense attorneys began to make use of medical opinion on madness, how the self-proclaimed specialists distanced themselves from lay witnesses, and how defendants offered the court a glimpse of madness "from the inside."
First multi-year cumulation covers six years: 1965-70.
The journal of Philadelphia Quaker Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker (1735-1807) is perhaps the single most significant personal record of eighteenth-century life in America from a woman's perspective. Drinker wrote in her diary nearly continuously between 1758 and 1807, from two years before her marriage to the night before her last illness. The extraordinary span and sustained quality of the journal make it a rewarding document for a multitude of historical purposes. One of the most prolific early American diarists—her journal runs to thirty-six manuscript volumes—Elizabeth Drinker saw English colonies evolve into the American nation while Drinker herself changed from a young unmarried woman ...
This book, the first to describe women medical practitioners other than midwives in the colonial period, emphasizes that medical care was part of every woman's work. The Healer's Calling uses memorable anecdotes, engaging characters, and medical oddities to tell the fascinating story of the practice of household medicine in early America. Rebecca J. Tannenbaum points out that housewives provided much of the medical care available in the seventeenth century. Elite women cared for the indigent in their towns and used medical practice to make influential connections with powerful men; "doctresses" or "doctor women" supported themselves with their practices and competed directly with male physic...
A comprehensive dictionary of sacred and magical gem lore that draws on the rarest source texts of Antiquity and the Middle Ages • Reveals the healing and magical virtues of familiar gemstones, such as amethyst, emerald, and diamond, as well as the lore surrounding exotic stones such as astrios, a stone celebrated by ancient magicians • Examines bezoars (stones formed in animals’ bodies) and “magnets” that attract materials other than metal • Based on ancient Arabic, Greek, Jewish, and European sources, ranging from the observations of Pliny the Elder to extremely rare texts such as the Picatrix and Damigeron’s Virtue of Stones Our ancestors believed stones were home to sacred ...
Mystical Bedlam explores the social history of insanity of early seventeenth-century England by means of a detailed analysis of the records of Richard Napier, a clergyman and astrological physician, who treated over 2000 mentally disturbed patients between 1597 and 1634. Napier's clients were drawn from every social rank and his therapeutic techniques included all the types of psychological healing practised at the time. His vivid descriptions of his clients' afflictions and complaints illuminate the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people. This book goes beyond simply analysing mental disorder in a seventeenth-century astrological and medical practice. It reveals contemporary attitudes towards family life, describes the appeal of witchcraft and demonology to ordinary villagers, and explains the social and intellectual basis for the eclectic blend of scientific, magical, and religious therapies practised before the English Revolution. Not only is it a contribution to the history of medicine but also a survey of some of the darkest regions of the mental world of the English people of the seventeenth century.
Rosenberg, Steven Shapin, Jean Silver-Isenstadt, Steven Stowe.
This book offers an interdisciplinary account of the relationship between criminal trials and novels in the modernist period.