ABSTRACT
William Hunter's unusual terminology reflected the fact that he was receiving booked onset calls in lieu of a midwife — the new form of practice that supervened around 1750. Hunter was the most famous and influential of the male practitioners concerned; it was entirely appropriate that it was he who embarked, from around 1750, on the systematic anatomical researches that were to culminate in 1773 with his Anatomy of the gravid uterus. The man who entered the womb and resolved the anatomy of the placenta was the same man who had most successfully entered the lying-in chamber. So too Hunter cultivated and gained the reputation of relying on the powers of Nature to effect the delivery of both child and placenta. Hunter's lectures make it abundantly clear that the male practitioner had to work to gain such practice. Hunter's practice was concentrated in elevated social sphere — the wives of the aristocracy and presumably the upper merchant classes in London.
