ABSTRACT
Most seventeenth-century male practice in midwifery consisted of emergency calls. For example, over 70% of the cases Percival Willughby included in his "Observations" were of this type, and in this respect those cases were probably representative of his practice. The role of the male practitioner was to deliver a dead child, usually with the crotchet, which required a surgical training, whereas the technique of turning the child belonged to mid-wives, precisely because this permitted a live birth. Willughby's experiences were characteristic of traditional obstetric surgery. Confirmation that obstetric surgery was routine, and that this consisted chiefly of the delivery of a dead child with instruments, comes from surgical textbooks — most notably Cooke's Mellificium chirurgiae, the standard text of the late seventeenth century. Only with the publication in the eighteenth century of the Chamberlen instruments and of Hendrik van Deventer's methods did the imaginative horizon of male obstetric practice shift beyond the delivery of a dead child.
