Vrouw Schraders beroepsjournaal: overwegingen bij een publikatie over arbeidspraktijk in het verleden

Abstract

The professional diary of Mrs. Schrader. Reflections on a publication dealing with professional practice in the past. TTiis es.say review analy.scs the recent publication of the professional diary which was kept from 1693 till 1745 by a Frisian midwife of German origin, named Catharina Geertruid Schrader and active in the village of Hallum and the town of Dokkum. As a matter of fact only a selection of gynaecologically interesting cases out of the diary has been published by the editors, i.e. 894 cases (29% of the total number), some of which have been related twice by the author of the diary. The volume is preceded by an historical and a gynaecological evaluation of the diary as a whole, both concluding to the rather exceptional character of the midwife's practice. This review asks some more questions about the value of this kind of source for our knowledge about professional practice in past centuries. It is argued that not the professional routine is written down, but its reflexive or exceptional aspects. For a correct interpretation of the diary, we need a previous reconstruction of the professional universe, the mentality and the value system of the practitioner, in order to seize the dimensions about which the author keeps silence. As for the present diary, we have also to recognise the exceptional status of midwife Schrader, having enjoyed as a surgeon's widow an acknowledged gynaecological experience which gave her practice a distinguished pathological mark. But this fact should not lead us to stigmatise her less instructed colleagues as obscurantists, as sometimes has been done. Though lacking gynaecological instruction and experience, their routine level as midwife should mostly have been as good as Mrs. Schrader's, whose reputation was largely due to her success as an experienced gynaecologist.