Authors: Sarah Fox (Department of History, University of Birmingham)

               Margaret Brazier (Department of Law, University of Manchester)

Abstract:

This article explores historical and legal approaches to past society, asking what each has to offer the other. Using early modern midwives’ oaths as a case study, it examines the extent to which the law shapes everyday life and society, and vice versa allowing us to situate early modern midwives at the intersection of a number of important and competing seventeenth-century institutions including state, church, society, and profession. We argue that a historico-legal approach to the practices of seventeenth-century midwives demands a reconsideration of the historiography of medical ethics and of the professions more broadly. It situates midwives as holders of formal office, and agents of the emergent early modern state and encourages reflection on the nature of ethical practice, and professional regulation within their social, cultural, and political context.

Published on Continuity and Change, Volume 38 , Issue 3 , December 2023 , pp. 231 - 253

Open access and free to download

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0268416023000309