The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770 (Routledge Library Editions: History of Medicine)

Originally published 1995 The Making of Man-Midwifery looks at how the eighteenth century witnessed a revolution in childbirth practices. By the last quarter of the century increasing numbers of babies were being delivered by men – a dramatic shift from the women-only ritual that had been standard throughout Western history. This authoritative and challenging work explains this transformation in medical practice and remarkable shift in gender relations. By tracing the actual development and transmission of the new midwifery skills through the period, the book addresses both technological and feminist arguments of the period. The study is distinctive in treating childbirth as both a bodily and a social event and in explaining how the two were intimately connected. Practical obstetrics is shown to have been shaped by the social relations surrounding deliveries, and specific techniques were associated with distinctive places and political allegiances. The books studies how increasing numbers emergent male-midwives had overtaken women in the skill of delivering children and how as such expectant mothers chose to use these male-midwives, thus heralding the growth of male-midwives in the period.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Wilson, Adrian

Women's Health

Routledge

A comprehensive introduction to sociological perspectives on the family. Wilson also considers the changing structure of the family and surveys the diversity of family types today.

Family (Society Now)

Parenting & Relationships

Adrian Wilson provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of the family. The book opens with a chapter on family structure, looking at the family historically and in cross-cultural perspective. Following this is a review first of theoretical approaches to the family, including functionalist, feminist, Marxist and radical criticism, and second, how the family is studied sociologically. Chapters 4 and 5 look at the changing British family and British families today, and the concluding chapters examine family problems, for example, divorce, violence, one -parent families, and the family and the state.

Family (Society now)

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

Tavistock

The Speculum Humanae Salvationis or Mirror of Human Salvation,” is the only medieval work that exists in illuminated manuscripts, in blockbook editions of the mid-fifteenth century, and in sixteen later incunabula. The authors have provided lavishly illustrated accounts of the manuscripts and included reproductions of all 116 woodcuts of the blockbooks, accompanied by a description of the typography and production and an interpretation of each scene.

A Medieval Mirror: Speculum humanae salvationis, 1324-1500

History

Wilson, Joyce Lancaster

Europe

University of California Press

In England in the seventeenth century, childbirth was the province of women. The midwife ran the birth, helped by female "gossips"; men, including the doctors of the day, were excluded both from the delivery and from the subsequent month of lying-in. 
 But in the eighteenth century there emerged a new practitioner: the "man-midwife" who acted in lieu of a midwife and delivered normal births. By the late eighteenth century, men-midwives had achieved a permanent place in the management of childbirth, especially in the most lucrative spheres of practice. 
 Why did women desert the traditional midwife? How was it that a domain of female control and collective solidarity became instead a region of male medical practice? What had broken down the barrier that had formerly excluded the male practitioner from the management of birth?
 This confident and authoritative work explores and explains a remarkable transformation--a shift not just in medical practices but in gender relations. Exploring the sociocultural dimensions of childbirth, Wilson argues with great skill that it was not the desires of medical men but the choices of mothers that summoned man-midwifery into being.

The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770

Harvard University Press

In 1967, award-winning designer Adrian Wilson wrote a seminal work on book design. It was published to enthusiastic critical acclaim, The Design of Books has since become the classic on the subject. This is a newly re-issued volume in 1993 and contains 250 outstanding design samples, many by leading international designers, accompanied by Adrian Wilson's insightful and inspirational text. A monumental achievement, The Design of Books is a work of art in itself and an essential addition to every designer's library. This book is considered a classic on the subject of the craft of bookmaking. A practical and effective compendium of information and inspiration for the book designer, this seminal work provides professionals and students of the book in typographic design with numerous design approaches and the information necessary to prepare layouts and carry a book through the production process. Illustrated with 250 superb design samples, many from the masterpieces of leading book designers, the book presents the principles and methods essential to planning and executing the design of a wide variety of publications, including limited editions, manuals, encyclopedias, trade, and reference books. Wilson's thorough text discusses in detail every aspect of book composition - from the manuscript, layout, typography, and paper to jacket in paperback covers, binding, and printing process. This book was out of print since 1998, but the 1999 edition of The Design of Books includes a forward by Sumner Stone, which brings this classic work into the computer age. The author's spirited approach to subject can be seen in his directive to the reader in the introduction: The criterion is imaginative appropriateness - that sense of delightful surprise which draws a reader to a book and sends him out of the store or library with it under his arm, which gives the book club or mail order subscriber a glow of delight and an irresistible desire to read.

The Design of Books

Computers & Technology

Graphics & Design

Chronicle Books LLC.

Family

Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England (The History of Medicine in Context)

This book places childbirth in early-modern England within a wider network of social institutions and relationships. Starting with illegitimacy - the violation of the marital norm - it proceeds through marriage to the wider gender-order and so to the ’ceremony of childbirth’, the popular ritual through which women collectively controlled this, the pivotal event in their lives. Focussing on the seventeenth century, but ranging from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this study offers a new viewpoint on such themes as the patriarchal family, the significance of illegitimacy, and the structuring of gender-relations in the period.

Although articles in this volume fall into three thematic clusters, each of those groups exemplifies three general themes: micro-social processes; innovations and the question of continuity versus discontinuity; and the relationship between ideas and practice. Most of these essays touch upon, and some of them are exclusively concerned with, small scale social processes: e.g. the routines of the all-female early-modern childbirth ritual, the different ways that male practitioners were summoned to such occasions, the functioning of voluntary hospitals, the protocols underlying patient records. Such social practices are well worth studying as both the sites and drivers of larger-scale historical change. Whenever there comes into being something new - whether an institution (a hospital), a social practice (the summoning of men as midwives) or a concept (a new approach to disease) - the question arises as to its relationship with what went before. This concept resonates throughout these essays, but is most to the fore in the chapters on early Hanoverian London (which asks explanatory questions) and on Porter versus Foucault (who represent the extremes of continuity and discontinuity respectively). A couple of generations ago, the ’history of ideas’ was pursued largely without reference to practice; in recent times, the danger has appeared of the very reverse taking place. This book ranges across a broad spectrum in this respect, the emphasis being sometimes upon practice (Eleanor Willughby’s work as a midwife) and sometimes upon ideas (concepts of pleurisy across the centuries); but in every case there is at least the potential for relating the two to one another. None of these themes is specific to medical history; on the contrary, they are the bread-and-butter of historical reconstruction in general.

Ideas and Practices in the History of Medicine, 1650–1820 (Variorum Collected Studies)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilson, Adrian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wilson, Adrian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilson, Adrian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770 (Routledge Library Editions: History of Medicine)

The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770 (Routledge Library Editions: History of Medicine)

Family (Society Now)

Family (Society now)

A Medieval Mirror: Speculum humanae salvationis, 1324-1500

The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770

The Design of Books

Family

Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England (The History of Medicine in Context)

Ideas and Practices in the History of Medicine, 1650–1820 (Variorum Collected Studies)