ABSTRACT
The traditional historiographic point of view on this subject portrays the advent of the male-midwife surgeon role in Spain as a result of French influence: the Bourbon Court in Madrid would have been the pathway of introduction for this trend, a trend widely accepted and generally adopted thereafter, as queens in labour were aided by male-midwife surgeons called upon from France for the occasion. Thus the fact that Jules Clément’s services were required in 1713 for the delivery of Queen Luisa Gabriela de Saboya, Philip V’s first wife, would appear as an almost outrageous exception at that time in Spain.2 The renown of French male-midwives and the example of the Royal Family would have been, at least initially, the main incentive in the introduction and spreading of male-midwife surgeons in Spain.
