What was role of midwives in ancient Mesopotamia?
1 Answer
Attached is a long article giving written evidence that medicine was a male profession but mid wives did the technical aspects of birthing.
Explanation:
http://www.raco.cat/index.php/Dynamis/article/viewFile/280697/368379
Worth a read here is an excerpt:
If we follow the thread of learned medical evidence, we get the pictureof a predominantly male professional circle that would have intervened in all matters of female infirmities, while the specific and more technical tasks of the experience of childbirth would have been undertaken by the midwife.
This, of course, is a vision strongly mediated by the written sources we must rely on. The interaction between or the possibility to have access to the expertise of a diversity of professionals, practitioners, and skilled people of various backgrounds, training and sphere of influence was probably more lively than the sources let us ascertain.
The following passage from our text, however formulaic it might be 61, suggests a division of activities in attendance at the birth. While the āšipu eases or opens the way of the child through ritual performance, it would be the duty of the midwife (šabsūtu) to attend the final stage of childbirth:
«Like Geme-Suen gave birth normally, may the young woman with
difficulties in childbirth give birth. The midwife (should) not be delayed 62,
let the pregnant woman go well» (BAM 248 iii 33-35) 63».
