Abstract
This nineteenth century illustration of a midwife on her way to a delivery was just one of the many fascinating slides shown recently at a Christmas Lecture at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, demonstrating the 'Story of Birth' through the ages. The delivery of babies was always regarded as the exclusive responsibility of the midwife, whose typical image was that of 'not quite drunk and but not quite sober', according to the speaker Mr john Studd, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at King's college Hospital. Men were not allowed in the birthing chamber, and in the sixteenth century a Doctor Wertt of Hamburg was burned at the stake for masquerading as a woman in order to discover the wonder of childbirth.
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