Introduction: Infertility in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine
Although the history of pregnancy and childbirth have been studied extensively in recent decades, infertility has received less historical attention, especially for the pre-modern period. This collection makes steps towards filling this gap. The introduction offers some insights on the significance of the history of infertility to scholarship on gender relations and the construction of gendered identities, midwifery and reproductive medicine, and the history of the family. It further offers some context and background to the history of infertility by briefly surveying how premodern medicine explained fertility problems and sought to treat them, and the social dimensions of infertility in this period. In addition, it highlights key themes in the articles to follow.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/2/211?rss=1
Anne of Bohemia and Her Struggle to Conceive
This article will examine and transcribe The National Archives E 101/402/18, a six-membrane collection of apothecary bills containing medicines purchased for Anne of Bohemia, first queen of Richard II (r. 1377–99). These bills date from the final year of Anne's life (she died of plague in June 1394), which indicates that the queen did not accept her childlessness as her permanent fate. In addition, Anne's treatment sheds light on the medicinal practices of late medieval English elites from the perspective of practice rather than theory (as presented in medieval texts).
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/2/224?rss=1
Men and Infertility in Late Medieval English Medicine
The history of male reproductive disorders in the Middle Ages has been comparatively neglected compared to the history of women’s medicine. This article explores the ways the subject was discussed in a sample of widely circulated medieval Latin medical texts and examines how this information was adapted in English translations and recipe collections aimed at a wider audience which included medical practitioners. It argues that the possibility of male infertility was often recognised in learned medicine and that the forms of male infertility discussed went beyond sexual dysfunction and were presented as more closely equivalent to female infertility. However, male reproductive disorders were not so prominent in less academic texts aimed at medical practitioners. These works did acknowledge the possibility of male infertility and their readers may have employed remedies for this in practice, but a greater emphasis was placed on women, a situation which may reflect wider social attitudes.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/2/245?rss=1
‚In the Merry Month of May: Instructions for Ensuring Fertility in MS British Library, Lansdowne 380
This paper explores the advice for fertility and health care contained in a late fifteenth-century manuscript: London, British Library MS Lansdowne 380. This study has chosen to engage with the larger theme of whether women had access to medical writings in the vernaculars of later-medieval England and whether this enabled them to control their own fertility. The paper shows that many women did have direct access to written knowledge, and that this knowledge combined theoretical and practical understanding for use in a domestic setting. Rather than being disenfranchised from responsibility for their own fertility, women collaborated with their husbands to ensure offspring and the future of their families. By refining the understanding of the use of manuscripts, the source of the knowledge they contained, and the question of ownership, the paper adds to our awareness of the scope and practice of fertility medicine in the later Middle Ages.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/2/267?rss=1
Literate Laywomen, Male Medical Practitioners and the Treatment of Fertility Problems in Early Modern England
This article examines the choices made by women in the literate classes in England in the seventeenth century with regards to the treatment of their fertility problems. It is not concerned with the specific cures used, but rather with who was considered an expert on female fertility problems and where women sought treatment when they suffered from such problems. It argues that female fertility patients of the literate classes were unlikely to approach male practitioners to treat their conditions (even more so than for other medical conditions) and were more likely to self-treat or seek advice from other women (lay or professional). It further argues that those cases in which women did consult male practitioners were limited to specific situations. However, laywomen did not reject physicians' claims for authoritative reproductive knowledge, but rather incorporated that knowledge into their own treatment.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/2/290?rss=1
‚They are called Imperfect men: Male Infertility and Sexual Health in Early Modern England
Scholars of early modern gender and medicine have tended to focus on female infertility. Discussions that have included male reproductive failure have considered sexual ability and impotence, rather than infertility. Nonetheless, fathering children was important to male social standing and the fulfilment of their patriarchal roles. This article will demonstrate that male infertility was not absent from medical literature, but appeared in a variety of settings including tests for infertility, seventeenth-century handbills for treatments, and surgical treatises. It will show that medical and surgical writers accepted that men could be rendered infertile, but still sexually capable, in a variety of ways. Moreover, the article will show that seventeenth-century surgeons expected male readers to be concerned about their reproductive potential and constructed a framework of efficacy based upon their ability to secure on-going fertility.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/2/311?rss=1
‚Elderly years cause a Total dispaire of Conception: Old Age, Sex and Infertility in Early Modern England
Although the history of old age has been studied in much greater detail in recent years, the subject of sexuality in old age remains relatively under-explored. This article examines early modern ideas about old bodies and sex in relation to fertility, to argue that because old bodies were understood as either infertile (post-menopausal women) or sub-fertile (old men) they were therefore characterised as unsuitable, undesirable and inappropriate sexual partners. Perceptions of old bodies, their sexual abilities, desirability and behaviour were remarkably consistent from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century. The ridiculing of old men and women's sexual behaviour that permeated contemporary culture in stories, ballads and jokes, alongside medical literature that characterised old bodies as sexually unappetising as well as unreproductive, carried the message that sexual activity was not for the old, and in large part because they were infertile.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/2/333?rss=1