Jane Sharp (fl. 1671)

Abstract

Sharp’s is the first book of midwivery written by an English woman. It draws on her thirty-year experience as a midwife and eschews Latin anatomical language. Her efforts to legitimate English midwives and challenge male-dominated medical knowledge (and particularly men’s disgust concerning female genitalia) can, as in the passage included here, result in a tendency to displace onto foreign women physical anomalies and non-normative sexual behaviors.