Helen King, Midwifery, obstetrics and the rise of gynaecology: the uses of a sixteenth-century compendium, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World series, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, pp. x, 228 illus. £55.00 (hardback 978-0-7546-5396-7).

Abstract

At the centre of Helen King’s ambitious new work is the Gynaeciorum libri; a massive mid-sixteenth-century Latin compendium of texts, both ancient and modern, on the medical treatment of women. Focusing on the reception of the compendium from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, King uses a number of case studies to tackle issues in the history of gynaecology and midwifery, and the history of the body.