No abstract

No abstract

This essay emphasizes the contributions made by white, middle-class women to the Museum of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick, founded in 1862. Archival sources reveal that women funded the museum by organizing entertainments, bazaars, and high teas. Although excluded from full membership in the Natural History Society, they found ways to represent themselves in the museum’s collections and acquisition records by employing the gendered strategy of gift giving. Studying these women does more than add detail to existing museum narratives. It sheds light on the shifting historical definition of museums, indicating that their economic function has changed since the nineteenth century.

Who was to blame when a labouring woman or her unborn child died during the early modern period? How was responsibility assessed, and who was charged with assessing it? To answer such questions, this article draws on French obstetrical treatises produced by male surgeons and female midwives between 1550 and 1730, focusing on descriptions of difficult deliveries. Sometimes the poor outcome of a labour was blamed on the pregnant woman herself, but more often a particular medical practitioner was implicated. Authors of obstetrical treatises were careful to assign fault when injuries or deaths occurred in cases concerning them. Chirurgiens accoucheurs (surgeon men-midwives) regularly accused female midwives of incompetence, yet also attacked fellow surgeons as well as those male physicians officially superior to them in the medical hierarchy. Female midwives similarly condemned the actions of male practitioners, without hesitating to censure other women when their mismanagement of deliveries had tragic consequences. Part of authors' eagerness to blame others stemmed from the fear of being held accountable for mistakes preceding practitioners had made. Ascribing responsibility usually went hand-in-hand with defensive claims of innocence, or boastful declarations of having saved a suffering woman from the bungling attempts of less skilled birth attendants.

No abstract