ABSTRACT
Manuscript translations of Libri Trotuli began to appear in English in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, several of which are still extant. The earliest English textbook for midwives in print was The birth of mankind. First published in 1540, it was translated by Richard Jonas from De partu hominis, which itself was a translation made in 1532 by Christian Egenolph from a German original. Pares complete works were translated another much earlier work was published in English in 1637, namely Jacob Rueff's The expert midwife, which had appeared in Latin under the title of De conceptu et generatione hominis in 1554. William Harvey's work on obstetrics De partu was published in Latin in 1651 and in English in 1653. It appeared as part of his work on embryology, entitled Anatomical exercitations, concerning the generation of living creatures. Paul Portal's La practique des accouchemens 1685, was translated into English, in 1705, as The compleat practice of men and women midwives.
