The Court Midwife

Abstract

Justine Siegemund, The Court Midwife , ed. and trans. Lynne Tatlock, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. 283. $24.00 (pbk). ISBN 0–226–75709–9. Lynne Tatlock, a professor of German, has produced an important and fully documented translation of the midwifery manual by Justine Siegemund. Born in Rohnstock in 1636, Siegemund was the first German midwife to write such a treatise. Although not without controversy, the book was generally well received when it was first published in 1690, appearing in seven subsequent editions during the early modern period. Tatlock's English translation of Siegemund's work contributes to the expanding scholarship on the history of midwifery and childbirth. Scholars already have access to publications by English midwives such as Jane Sharp (1671) and Sarah Stone (1737), as well as translations into English of the memoirs of the Frisian midwife Catharina Schrader (1693–1745), and the treatise by Anna Horenburg, first published in Wolfenbüttel in 1700. Books written by French women have yet to be translated but a modern version of the 1652 edition of the famous obstetrical treatise by royal midwife Louise Bourgeois is now available.