Webinar: Pregnant Women’s Wellbeing in Jane Sharp’s “The Midwives’ Book” (1671) – Martina Guzzetti

Women’s Ideas in the History of Medicine
Fertility, Maternity, and Reproduction – 2025 Webinars Series

Organised by Jil Muller & Fabrizio Bigotti. Organised in collaboration with the Centre for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists – University of Paderborn, this series seeks to understand the role of women in the history of medicine by exploring their contributions in fields such as natural philosophy, household remedies, plant manipulation and selection, as well as midwifery.

Pregnant Women’s Wellbeing in Jane Sharp’s “The Midwives’ Book” (1671)
Women’s health, wellbeing, and medical conditions have always been at the centre of gendered debates concerning, among other things, who has the necessary knowledge and authority to discuss and provide advice about them. Of the many branches of medicine involved in these debates, midwifery certainly holds a prominent position: in particular, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these controversies saw the rivalry between midwives and the emerging men-midwives encapsulated in their own publications. While men’s textbooks on midwifery were limited to the description of women’s anatomy and the discussion of the birth event itself (without taking into consideration what happened to women before, during, and after pregnancy), the midwives’ manuals offered a different point of view, that is, one of a skilled practitioner (despite the misogynist stereotypes) who could also share with her patients the same experience, thus having access to a kind of knowledge which went beyond the purely technical one. This contribution deals in particular with Jane Sharp’s The Midwives’ Book (1671) and offers to focus precisely on an aspect often overlooked in men’s textbooks, that is, pregnant women’s wellbeing, be it physical and/or mental. The analysis considers the creation of discourses related, for example, to factors helping the conception of a child, to easing labour, and to preventing diseases after childbirth. In the discussion, particular attention will be devoted to the peculiar connection between midwives and pregnant women, and to the references to professional and private experience used to back up such knowledge.

About the Speaker…
Martina Guzzetti is a Post-Doctoral Researcher and Lecturer of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Insubria and the University of Milan. Her research is based around language and gender studies in historical perspective, with a focus on news discourse, lexicography, and the popularisation of medical knowledge. She is currently working on a project about pregnant women’s wellbeing in midwifery manuals and domestic dictionaries.

29 May 2025 – 4.00 PM (CEST)

Read more about the entire webinar series and find details on how to register on this website.