Overview

The first full study of “birth figures,” a set of illustrations which were widely reproduced in early modern books on childbirth and midwifery.  Birth figures are printed images of the pregnant uterus, always shown in series, that depict the variety of ways in which a fetus can present for birth. Historian Rebecca Whiteley coined the term and here offers the first systematic analysis of the images’ creation, use, and impact. Whiteley reveals their origins in ancient medicine and explores their inclusion in many medieval gynecological manuscripts, focusing on their explosion in printed midwifery and surgical books from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries in western Europe. During this period, birth figures formed a key part of the visual culture of medicine and midwifery and were widely produced. They reflected and shaped how the pregnant body was known and treated. And by providing crucial bodily knowledge to midwives and surgeons, birth figures were also deeply entangled with wider cultural preoccupations with generation and creativity, female power and agency, knowledge and its dissemination, and even the condition of the human in the universe.  Birth Figures studies how different kinds of people understood childbirth and engaged with midwifery manuals, from learned physicians to midwives to illiterate listeners. Rich and detailed, this vital history reveals the importance of birth figures in how midwifery was practiced, and how people, both medical professionals and lay readers, envisioned and understood the mysterious state of pregnancy. 

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Reviews

With Birth Figures, Whiteley adds much to our historical understanding of pregnancy and childbirth. Moving beyond old historical narratives of the conflict between male midwives-with their instruments and interventionist approach-and traditional female midwives, who assisted in the natural process of birth, Whiteley presents a more complex and nuanced story of shifting understandings among both men and women and new skill sets required of both male and female birth attendants. The book also adds to the growing literature on the relationship between art and science and the creation of 'visual languages' to convey knowledge of different subjects. -- Kathleen Crowther, University of Oklahoma The history of midwifery is transformed by this first sustained analysis of printed drawings showing birth presentations in pregnant wombs. Recovering midwives' pictorial practice while putting anatomy in its place, Whiteley reconstructs how copying drove innovation and viewers made meanings. Her appealing book thus extends reproductive, gender, and visual studies, as well as histories of art, medicine, and the body. -- Nick Hopwood, University of Cambridge Whiteley's work, at the intersection of medical and art history, beautifully illuminates the multiple meanings of images of unborn children in early modern Europe. She offers fresh, sophisticated, and nuanced interpretations of images that have puzzled me for years! -- Mary E. Fissell, Johns Hopkins University In this fascinating porthole into English pregnancy culture in the 16th to 18th centuries, cherubic representations of fetuses in transparent wombs greet bewildered readers... By recasting birth figures as evolving feminist iconography, Whiteley places these artifacts in the context of contemporary debates over reproductive rights. * Scientific American *

With Birth Figures, Rebecca Whiteley adds much to our historical understanding of pregnancy and childbirth. Moving beyond old historical narratives of the conflict between male midwives-with their instruments and interventionist approach-and traditional female midwives, who assisted in the natural process of birth, Whiteley presents a more complex and nuanced story of shifting understandings among both men and women and new skill sets required of both male and female birth attendants. The book also adds to the growing literature on the relationship between art and science and the creation of 'visual languages' to convey knowledge of different subjects. -- Kathleen Crowther, University of Oklahoma The history of midwifery is transformed by this first sustained analysis of printed drawings showing birth presentations in pregnant wombs. Recovering midwives' pictorial practice, while putting anatomy in its place, Rebecca Whiteley reconstructs how copying drove innovation and viewers made meanings. Her appealing book thus extends reproductive, gender, and visual studies, as well as histories of art, medicine, and the body. -- Nick Hopwood, University of Cambridge Whiteley's work, at the intersection of medical and art history, beautifully illuminates the multiple meanings of images of unborn children in early modern Europe. She offers fresh, sophisticated, and nuanced interpretations of images that have puzzled me for years! -- Mary E. Fissell, Johns Hopkins University

With Birth Figures, Rebecca Whiteley adds much to our historical understanding of pregnancy and childbirth. Moving beyond old historical narratives of the conflict between male midwives-with their instruments and interventionist approach-and traditional female midwives, who assisted in the natural process of birth, Whiteley presents a more complex and nuanced story of shifting understandings among both men and women and new skill sets required of both male and female birth attendants. The book also adds to the growing literature on the relationship between art and science and the creation of 'visual languages' to convey knowledge of different subjects. -- Kathleen Crowther, University of Oklahoma

Author Information

Rebecca Whiteley is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. 

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