Midwifery

Midwifery is a blanket term used to describe a number of different types of health practitioners, other than physicians, who provide prenatal care to expecting mothers, attend the birth of the infant and provide postnatal care to the mother and infant. Nurse-midwives (U.S.) may also provide gynecological care. Practitioners of midwifery are known as midwives, a term used in reference to both women and men (the term means "with the woman"). Most are independent practitioners who work with obstetricians when the need arises.They usually deal with normal births only but are trained to recognise and deal with deviation from the norm. If something abnormal is discovered during prenatal care, the client is sent to an obstetrician. Other midwives will deal with abnormal births, including breech birth.

Historical Perspective

Historically, midwifery has been one of the few medical practices dominated by female practitioners. From Agnodice in ancient Greece to the 18th century in Europe, the care of mothers and delivery of infants has been regarded, both by patients and by the medical profession, as appropriately carried out by women. In the 18th century, a division between surgeons and midwives arose as medical men began to assert that their modern scientific processes were better for mothers and infants than the folk-medical midwives. At the outset of the 18th century in England, most babies were caught by a midwife. By the onset of the 19th century, the majority of those babies born to persons of means had a surgeon involved. A number of excellent full length studies of this historical shift have been written.

Related Topics:
Agnodice - Greece - 18th century - Europe - Surgeon - England - 19th century

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