Abstract

MARTINEZ ROJO, Carmen; SILES GONZALEZ, José  and  MARTINEZ ROCHE, Mª Emilia. The manuals written by european midwives (1609-1710): origin humanized care in pregnancy. Index Enferm [online]. 2014, vol.23, n.1-2, pp.106-110. ISSN 1699-5988.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S1132-12962014000100023.

Objective: Analyze managed care by midwives in pregnancy in the seventeenth Century and transmitted through the manual written by the same midwives. Methods: Qualitative methodology from hermeneutics and cultural history through ethnographic techniques and the reading of five manuals (1609-1710) and categorizing the texts with the dialectical model construction-deconstruction. Results: Our results were the identification of care impregnated popular beliefs and how they evolved toward science through diagnosis, hygiene and dietary advice, antenatal checks and attention to pathologies. Conclusions: We conclude that midwives of seventeenth-Century cohered through to the structural element of the manuals around values of respect for women's physiology and will be seed for a humanized midwifery and give them identity as a professional group.

Keywords : Nursing history; Midwife; Louise Bourgeois; Jane Sharp; Justine Siegemund.