"Not of woman born, the Fortunate, the Unborn"—the terms
designating those born by Caesarean section in medieval and
Renaissance Europe were mysterious and ambiguous. Examining
representations of Caesarean birth in legend and art and tracing
its history in medical writing, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
addresses the web of religious, ethical, and cultural questions
concerning abdominal delivery in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. Not of Woman Born increases our understanding of the
history of the medical profession, of medical iconography, and of
ideas surrounding "unnatural" childbirth. Blumenfeld-Kosinski
compares texts and visual images in order to trace the evolution of
Caesarean birth as it was perceived by the main actors
involved—pregnant women, medical practitioners, and artistic or
literary interpreters. Bringing together medical treatises and
texts as well as hitherto unexplored primary sources such as
manuscript illuminations, she provides a fresh perspective on
attitudes toward pregnancy and birth in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance; the meaning and consequences of medieval medicine for
women as both patients and practitioners, and the
professionalization of medicine. She discusses writings on
Caesarean birth from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when
Church Councils ordered midwives to perform the operation if a
mother died during childbirth in order that the child might be
baptized; to the fourteenth century, when the first medical text,
Bernard of Gordon's Lilium medicinae, mentioned the operation; up
to the gradual replacement of midwives by male surgeons in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Not of Woman Born offers the
first close analysis of Frarnois Rousset's 1581 treatise on the
operation as an example of sixteenth-century medical discourse. It
also considers the ambiguous nature of Caesarean birth, drawing on
accounts of such miraculous examples as the birth of the
Antichrist. An appendix reviews the complex etymological history of
the term "Caesarean section." Richly interdisciplinary, Not of
Woman Born will enliven discussions of the controversial issues
surrounding Caesarean delivery today. Medical, social, and cultural
historians interested in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,
historians, literary scholars, midwives, obstetricians, nurses, and
others concerned with women's history will want to read it.
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