Of forceps and folios: Eighteenth-century British midwifery publications and the construction of professional identity.
Item
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Title
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Of forceps and folios: Eighteenth-century British midwifery publications and the construction of professional identity.
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Identifier
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AAI3204140
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identifier
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3204140
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Creator
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Herrle-Fanning, Jeanette.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Bonnie Anderson
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History of Science | Women's Studies | Health Sciences, Obstetrics and Gynecology
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Abstract
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This dissertation inquires into the exponential growth of British obstetrical literature over the course of the eighteenth century, against the backdrop of the emergence of the modern knowledge-based professions and the growth of the literary public sphere in Georgian Britain. "Scientific midwifery" (later obstetrics), was a profession which in many ways wrote itself into existence by evolving a system of publication and lecturing that disseminated a new kind of knowledge about reproduction. In its emphasis on midwifery's status as a discourse in and of the public interest rather than mere manual skill gained through accumulated experience, "scientific midwifery" was quite distinct from the traditional practice of midwifery by women in local and domestic settings.;Midwifery, long perceived as informal "women's work," was hardly a promising candidate for professionalization. In Britain there was neither a corporate institution nor system of legal regulation in place to grant professional status to midwives let alone legitimacy to the men who practiced midwifery in increasing numbers during the eighteenth century. My dissertation examines how male midwifery practitioners self-consciously used publication to create for themselves a collective professional identity of a distinctly modern and gendered sort, grounded in a specialized expertise they claimed could be both theoretical and practical. Yet rather than view publication as merely a convenient tool in the hands of shrewd self-promoters, much of my study is dedicated to showing how developments in the use of print---such as emerging conventions of scientific publication, changing notions of authorship, and shifting cultural attitudes toward the status of printed texts as sources of reliable knowledge---had a significant, if under-recognized, impact on the transformation of midwifery into obstetrics. In sum I argue that "scientific midwifery" is very much the child of a print culture. In bringing together methods and models drawn from gender studies, the sociology of the professions, the history of the book and rhetorical studies of science in my consideration of this topic, I attempt to demonstrate that the "battle of the midwives and the doctors" was as much a matter of shifting epistemological allegiances as it was a conflict between competing groups of practitioners.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
