Early modern midwifery: splitting the profession, connecting the history.

'Early Modern Midwifery: Splitting the Profession, Connecting the History' examines the status of midwives in early modern England and makes two substantive claims. First, it argues that while historians have recognized that midwives came from across the social spectrum, they have failed to incorporate this knowledge into their analyses. Work as a midwife was (obviously) medical in nature, but midwives' medical authority depended on a range of other factors, including social and marital status, wealth, and neighborliness. Because midwives came from across the social spectrum, their experience as practitioners was similarly diverse: a wealthy midwife's practice would have been qualitatively different than a poor midwife's. Second, the article connects recent cultural histories of early modern midwifery to life in England's parishes. It. does this by analyzing the language in which ordinary men and women talked about midwifery, and argues that during the 1690s Enlightenment ideas about science, midwifery, and childbirth began to gain currency in provincial England. It was during this period that midwifery underwent a transition from a 'mystery' to a 'science,' a change that facilitated the rise of male authority over childbirth.