ABSTRACT
The biographeme suspends narrative time and the telos that only such time can insure. Through the pages of Percival Willughby’s Observations in Midwifery – the classic source on childbirth in seventeenth-century England – there flits intermittently a daughter of Willughby’s who practised as a midwife, both in tandem with her father and in her own right. Yet certain aspects of the case, or of Willughby’s account of it, were atypical: for instance, his call to the delivery seldom came from the midwife, for midwives often resented his intrusion, and only occasionally did he report that ‘Divines were consulted’. Harvey’s discussion of birth was chiefly theoretical in intent; yet it had certain practical implications. The ‘Additional Table’ did cite Eleanor’s cases – but merely under the headings ‘Belly, back, buttocks’ and ‘Dr. Harvey commended’.
