Elisabeth en Neeltje van Putten: twee 18e-eeuwse grensgangers tussen de beroepsvelden van vroedvrouw en vroedmeester

Abstract

Elisabeth and Neeltje van Putten: two 18th-century representatives of the territories of man-midwives and midwives Recent research into the development of midwifery in Western Europe is gradually making it clear that midwives in the 17th and 18th centuries played a far more important role than Whig historians of the 19th and 20th centuries would have us believe. Even in the period of the rise of man-midwifery, with the concurrent division between the spheres of action of male and female obstetrics, there obviously were some women who functioned in both territories. In this article we bring to the fore two daughters of a Rotterdam surgeon, who graduated not only as midwives, but also obtained permission to exercise the obstetric practice of the man-midwife. Moreover, one of them succeeded in publishing two articles on obstetrics in the Dutch medical periodical Hippocrates. The case of the female man-midwives of Rotterdam is of special significance due to the local tradition of trying to reform surgical and obstetrical practice not via the academic branch of medicine but by the surgeons themselves, not from above but from below. Moreover, it offers a remarkable alternative solution to the problem of determining the boundaries between the two areas of obstetric practice. Through extending the number of midwives whose life and work have been studied in more detail, we hope to build up a prosopography of Dutch midwifery which will increase our knowledge and insight into the development of the medical professions in The Netherlands.