"Para que se multiplique la instrucción, y entre por los ojos la Anatomía": text and image at the birth of obstetrics

Abstract

In this study, we propose to analize a set of arts of parturition published in Spain in the second half of the Eighteenth century, as well as the anatomical waxes used in the teaching of a discipline which is being codified, obstetrics, in the Royal College of Surgery of San Carlos, founded in Madrid in 1787 by King Charles III. We will analize the role played by the images alongside the text, the way they reflect the scientific advances, as well as the ideological scope, perceptible in the arts of parturition, of a double willingness to control pregnancy and childbirth: on the part of surgeons, who want to reinforce their role, medicalizing what was seen until then as a natural process, in order to impose themselves against midwives; but also on the part of the royal power, in order to ensure the survival of mothers and their children, in a socio-economic perspective.