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Through the cases of approximately 80 females in the case records of traditional physician Yi Sugwi (1664-1740?), the present study divided and reclassified the lives and diseases of females during the latter half of the Joseon Dynasty into childhood, obstetrics- and gynecology-related problems in adulthood, other diseases in adulthood, and old age and analyzed them. According to the results, female children were treated less preciously than were male children so that treatments by traditional physicians were sought out less when they were ill than in the case of male children, and acute infectious diseases were the most serious health problems. In the process of receiving treatment from traditional physicians as adults, females came in contact with traditional physicians, who were male, when necessary including face-to-face sessions and the reception of pulse examination but the yangban (literati-official) class practiced sex segregation as much as possible while the lower classes were considerably free from such restrictions. For female adults, the most serious health issues were pregnancy and childbirth so that they received help from traditional physicians and midwives when there were problems. Traditional physicians determined females' pregnancy and the health of fetuses and pregnant women through pulse examinations and medication and actively responded to diverse problems that surfaced in the process with medication and other treatments. Acute infectious diseases, too, were serious diseases suffered by females, and problems involving cold damage and the digestive system were among diseases frequently suffered by females in adulthood and old age. In old age, females often became ill in the arduous process of dealing with the deaths of adult descendants, siblings, and spouses, and tumors were among the major causes of their deaths. The deaths of those aged 70 or above were accepted as quite natural. Aged females endeavored to maintain their health and played the role of elders giving care to their descendants.

The untimely death of a young Princess of Wales reverberated around the world in August 1997. Diana, Princess of Wales, was not, however, the first holder of that title to suffer an early demise. Princess Charlotte of Wales was fifteen years younger and died exactly one hundred and eighty years earlier. A national feeling of grief and desolation consumed the nation in the same way as it did following the death of the "People's Princess" in the twentieth century. Her death during childbirth led to a change in the practice of obstetrics and a succession crisis in the British monarchy. But were the consequences of the fateful night of 6th November 1817 to be even more profound, indirectly contributing to war in Europe a century later?

This article examines late medieval English representations of the startling and apocryphal story of Salome, the skeptical midwife who dares to touch, or at least attempt to touch, the Virgin Mary "in sexu secreto" during a postpartum examination at the nativity. Salome's story originated in the second century, but its late medieval iterations are inflected by a culture interested in evaluating and examining sensory evidence, in both medicine and religion. The story appears in sermon collections, devotional texts, the cycle nativity plays, and John Lydgate's Life of Our Lady, and these variations demonstrate the intersection of gender and experience-based knowledge in medical and devotional contexts. Salome's story provides a unique opportunity to study late medieval interpretations of female medicine, materialism, and spirituality.

We know only rather few samples of Semmelweis's handwriting and therefore it is important to carefully preserve those we have. The first collection of his manuscripts was published by Antall et al in 1968. During the following 47 years only rather few further samples of his handwriting have been published. Our present collection completes the former list with two previously unknown letters and with an earlier unpublished document signed by Semmelweis. The first document is a certificate written by Semmelweis in 1854 regarding the age of a woman who delivered her child at Szent Rókus Hospital in Pest. The second document includes a request from the Court of Justice towards the Medical Faculty's of the University of Pest regarding the body's opinion in a case of infanticide. The third document is a registration book of a student at the University of Medicine signed by Semmelweis in 1859. Present work attempts to list all of Semmelweis's handwritings known at this moment. The list includes 29 documents written by Semmelweis and further 16 documents signed by him.

After the publication of the Dutch medical guideline on pharmacological analgesia during childbirth in 2008, the question of whether pharmacological pain relief should be permissible during labour was hotly debated. This discussion has been going on since the second half of the 19th century when the introduction of ether and chloroform was extensively studied and described in Great Britain. This article looks back on the same debate in the Netherlands when inhalational anaesthetics were introduced into obstetrics. Study of historical journals and textbooks, originating in the Netherlands and elsewhere, and of historical medical literature on anaesthesia and obstetrics shows that the Dutch protagonists adopted more nuanced ideas on this issue than many of their foreign colleagues. This description of the first Dutch debate on anaesthesia in obstetrics shows that in fact the issues and arguments are timeless.

The interest for the study of Anatomy in Modena was particularly developed since the second half of eighteenth century, when the Duke Francesco III of Este promoted the reformation of the University and Antonio Scarpa was called from Padua to teach Anatomy. Scarpa promoted the building of the Anatomical Theatre, near the Grande Spedale, that was inaugurated in 1776. On the same year, the School of Obstetrics opened and determined the constitution of a first Cabinet or Obstetric Museum in a room next to the Theatre. After the Restoration, between 1817 and 1818, the Archduke Francesco IV of Austria Este promoted the realization of an Anatomical Museum: a big organized room in a new floor built on the Theatre. Two more rooms were added in, 1839 and a fourth one in 1853, under the direction of Paolo Gaddi. Furthermore Gaddi's interest for ethnographic studies determined the opening of the Ethnographic Anthropological Museum in 1866.

A birth with fatal outcome for both the mother and the foetus was reported in the Danish medical journal, Bibliothek for Læger in 1868. Here, the article with its two illustrations is summarised because of the vivid description of the course together with the therapeutic considerations expressed by the obstetrician. Due to an earlier osteomyelitis the pregnant woman's spine was deformed and her pelvis was narrowed. The birth came to a standstill, and it became necessary to reduce the circumference of the foetus' cranium by perforation, after which the dead foetus could be delivered. The woman died of infection some days later. Afterwards her deformed lumbar spine and pelvis was removed, preserved and depicted in two lithographs. The preserved pelvis is still extant in the Saxtorphian obstetric collection in Medical Museion, Copenhagen.

Two questions emerge as regards Semmelweis's reception and public memory: 1. How and why could turn Semmelweis into an emblematic representative of 19th-20th century science and medicine? 2. What sort of values and ideals does the fate of Semmelweis represent for us? Author calls our attention to the fact, that in Semmelweis's case, not only his discoveries and thought proved to be of abiding value, but during the last 120 years also his fate inspired a number of scientific, popular, non fictional and fictional analysis all over the world. Semmelweis, as a mythic representative of the modern "scientist" still owes a peculiar place in the common memory. His manipulated and partly intentionally coined story--based however on empirical facts--even today represents a relevant message and plays an important role in the making of the myth of modern physician. Author however emphasizes, that Semmelweis myth represent a somewhat different message for the international public and for the Hungarian one.

Dr. Besim Ömer Akalin, was a pioneer in modern obstetric and neonatal practices, and the founder of the first maternity hospital in Turkey. He established nursing as profession and promoted the development of modern midwifery. Besim Omer Pasha was also ins- trumental in the organization of the Turkish Red Crescent, the Institute for Protection of Children, and the Society for Tuberculosis Control. Professor Besim Omer Akalin chai- red the gynecology and obstetric clinics of the Medical Faculty, and was elected Rector of the Istanbul University. He also served as General Director of Health, and was a Member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in his later years. Together with his textbooks and treatises, Besim Ömer Akalin published booklets for the public where he addressed a wide range of topics on social health, hygiene and welfare.

The link between hygiene and the concept of transmission of infective diseases was established earlier than the birth of microbiology, thanks to the studies of two neglected physicians of maternity clinic, Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis and Oliver Holmes, in the mid-1800s. Surprisingly, centuries earlier, a medieval women physician, Trotula de Ruggiero, introduced for the first time the notion of diseases’ prevention, highlighting the importance of the association of personal hygiene, balanced nutrition and physical activity for better health. Moreover, she was particularly concerned of hands hygiene for the midwives during child birth, to preserve the good health of both the mother and the baby. She practiced inside the medieval Medical School of Salerno, whose main text, the “Regimen Sanitatis Salerni” has an entire part dedicated to hygiene, providing hygienic precepts that anticipate the concepts derived from the revolutionary discoveries in medical science only centuries later.

Purpose of Review: To chronicle a medical professional society's adoption of innovation and to describe themes pertinent to the adoption., Recent Findings: In September 2013, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) published a Committee Opinion on Toxic Environmental Agents that included an infographic and social media awareness campaign. To date, it claims one of the highest total audience reaches for an ACOG Facebook post reaching nearly 18 000 viewers. Despite this powerful promise, ACOG's timely and successful social media campaign did not always appear an obvious strategy. Although social media took hold of popular culture in the early 2000s, social media's professional etiquette remained uncharted and rife, with cautionary tales through the latter half of the decade., Summary: Through a thoughtful and dedicated process, the ACOG Fellow and Junior Fellow leadership partnered to navigate the appropriate balance of innovation and prudence that propelled ACOG into social media's golden age, and paved the pathway for more progressive institutional changes.

During the past century, imaging of the pregnant patient has been performed with radiography, scintigraphy, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasonography (US). US imaging has emerged as the primary imaging modality, because it provides real-time images at relatively low cost without the use of ionizing radiation. This review begins with a discussion of the history and current status of imaging modalities other than US for the pregnant patient. The discussion then turns to an in-depth description of how US technology advanced to become such a valuable diagnostic tool in the obstetric patient. Finally, the broad range of diagnostic uses of US in these patients is presented, including its uses for distinguishing an intrauterine pregnancy from a failed or ectopic pregnancy in the first trimester; assigning gestational age and assessing fetal weight; evaluating the fetus for anomalies and aneuploidy; examining the uterus, cervix, placenta, and amniotic fluid; and guiding obstetric interventional procedures.

The Aschheim-Zondek reaction is generally regarded as the first reliable hormone test for pregnancy and as a major product of the 'heroic age' of reproductive endocrinology. Invented in Berlin in the late 1920s, by the mid 1930s a diagnostic laboratory in Edinburgh was performing thousands of tests every year for doctors around Britain. In her classic history of antenatal care, sociologist Ann Oakley claimed that the Aschheim-Zondek test launched a 'modern era' of obstetric knowledge, which asserted its superiority over that of pregnant women. This article reconsiders Oakley's claim by examining how pregnancy testing worked in practice. It explains the British adoption of the test in terms less of the medicalisation of pregnancy than of clinicians' increasing general reliance on laboratory services for differential diagnosis. Crucially, the Aschheim-Zondek reaction was a test not directly for the fetus, but for placental tissue. It was used, less as a yes-or-no test for ordinary pregnancy, than as a versatile diagnostic tool for the early detection of malignant tumours and hormonal deficiencies believed to cause miscarriage. This test was as much a product of oncology and the little-explored world of laboratory services as of reproductive medicine., (Copyright © 2013 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

This article appraises the late twentieth century maxim that prior to thalidomide's clarion call in 1961, a generic "we" believed that the fetus was protected from external insult by the placental barrier. Complicating this truism, we demonstrate that the placenta was, since early in the twentieth century, conceived of as a site of constant passage of entities both necessary to, and dangerous for, fetal development. Moving between evidence from specialist journals, obstetrics textbooks, and pregnancy advice manuals, we argue that the placental barrier writ large only emerged as an explicit actor after the medical community was disillusioned with it: it became something that does not exist. The article proposes that the nostalgia for a barrier lost constructs the modern-day fetus as more exposed and vulnerable than if "we" had never imagined this protection in the first place. The rhetorical shorthand of the erstwhile placental barrier has both deflected more nuanced accounts of the thalidomide story and contributed to the increasing surveillance of pregnant women's behavior, particularly in late twentieth century North America., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Thirty years ago, twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS) was one of the most challenging problems of modern obstetrics. The associated mortality and morbidity was staggering, and a sense of hopelessness prevailed among clinicians and pediatric pathologists. Technical advances in ultrasound, endoscopy, video recording, and medical lasers formed the basis for diagnosis and in utero therapy of placental disorders. We review some historical events which gave rise to a new treatment modality for TTTS, fetoscopic laser occlusion of chorioangiopagous vessels, now the most common operation performed worldwide in behalf of fetuses in peril., (Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.)

The second half of the 19th century marked the rise of obstetrics as a legitimate physician-dominated medical specialty. In this period of transition, distanced from traditional cultures of social childbirth but not yet embracing hospital deliveries, many middle-class North American women turned to prescriptive literature to fill a crucial gap. In the medical advice they directed at young wives and expectant mothers, physicians consistently emphasized the middle-class woman's heightened sensitivity to the pain of giving birth, relying on arguments that resonated with the class, gender, and racial tensions of the late-Victorian period while consistently reaffirming physicians' expanding authority.

Reform of medical education in Vienna in the early 19th century led to bodies of patients who had died being used as obstetric simulators. It was unpleasant, but it was thought that learning on a cadaver simulator would be superior to learning on phantoms (artificial simulators). Unfortunately, the change was associated with a significant increase in maternal mortality from puerperal fever and thousands of women died before Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis recognized that the condition was transmitted from the cadaver to the parturient and could be prevented by careful hand washing. A hundred fifty years later, the spread of infection on the hands of health care professionals is still a cause for concern. The apparently simple skill of cleaning hands and adherence to hand hygiene guidelines should be included in scenarios. We also need to make sure that current simulation-based training does not have unwanted consequences.