ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the most prominent motherless creation of the long eighteenth century, the automaton, which featured in the writings of René Descartes, in obstetric teaching, and in public exhibitions. Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s text Man a Machine popularized this term. The Cartesian analogy of “man a machine” positioned the male midwife and the automaton manufacturer as inventor-creators who could apparently bring new life into the world with technical precision. If the womb acted like a tomb, technology from automaton manufacture and the evolving field of obstetrics apparently illustrated men’s technical expertise. British male midwives—commonly known as man-midwives—distinguished themselves from female midwives with their use of forceps. At the same time, narratives about obstetricians’ use of technology became exaggerated. A rival to the Scottish obstetrician William Smellie, Elizabeth Nihell, misrepresented his use of birthing machines, and she engaged in debate with the author Tobias Smollett. The ability of automaton makers such as Jacques de Vaucanson to translate God’s perfect design for man into machines seemed copacetic with the Cartesian approach to medicine, which likewise viewed imagination as a controllable organ of sorts. However, among automaton manufacturers, mastery of the body was itself a kind of fabrication.
