The last blog was about birthing chairs, as advised by a German physician, Rosslin, who published the Rosengarten - a best seller amongst midwives and the medical fraternity of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Rosslin considered midwives of his time to be responsible for many maternal deaths, and wrote this textbook for them. In fact, the Rosengarten was very much based upon the writings of the Greek physician Soranus, who practised medicine in Rome round about 100AD. (The original copy of Soranus’ writings is now in the Vatian library).

Much of the medical literature at that time was just rehashed and recycled from the great writers of Greek and Roman times, such as Aristotle and Galen, and Rosslin acknowledges the ancient authorship of much of the book. He also included new material, however, incorporating what he regarded as good midwifery practice, told to him, no doubt, by midwives. Perhaps there were some whose practice he respected, and to whom he would listen. Up until relatively recently, midwives have had a bad press, often described as ignorant, dirty and drunk most of the time. 

I'll come back to this in later blogs, but for now I'll just say that the Rosengarten became a best seller in Germany. The fact that this book was widely used by midwives indicates they were probably far more literate than widely believed. One of the reasons sometimes given as to why medieval women were not allowed to study at universities is that they said to be were illiterate, but this seems by no means always to have been the case.

The Rosengarten was translated into English and published in 1540 under the title of “The Byrth of   Mankind”. It was dedicated to Queen Catherine Howard, one of King Henry's wives, fated to die on the scaffold two years later.