ABSTRACT
During the seventeenth century, certain English midwives and doctors distinguished themselves in the midwifery. Men who became directly involved originally called themselves ‘men-midwives’ but gradually other titles came to be used. The Chamberlens practised in England during the last decades of the sixteenth century, for the whole of the seventeenth century, and into the next. This family of medical men has had a profound and lasting influence on the practice of both midwifery and obstetrics in England and in other European countries. Herbal remedies were prescribed for swooning and other minor disorders of the pregnancy and the ‘treatment’ for vomiting was syrup of pomegranates, musk, lignum, aloes, cinnamon and sorrel in the water. For the management of the premature labour the midwife was advised to use the ‘suffumigation of frankincense upon the coales’, to strengthen the matrix and the infant.
