In early modern Europe, as in developing countries today, much of the population had to struggle to survive. Estimates for many parts of preindustrial Europe, as for several countries in the so-called Third World, suggest that the majority of the inhabitants owned so little property that their livelihood was highly insecure. 1 Basically, all those who lived by the work of their hands were at risk, and the reasons for their vulnerability were manifold. Economic cycles and seasonal fluctuations jeopardized the livelihood of the rural and urban masses. Warfare, taxation, and other decisions by the ruling elites sometimes had far-reaching direct and indirect repercussions on the lives of the poor. This is also true of natural factors, both catastrophes and the usual weather fluctuations, which were a major factor affecting harvest yields. Equal in importance were the risks and uncertainties inherent in life and family cycles: disease, old age, widowhood, or having many young children.On calculating both the incomes and the subsistence needs of the "labouring poor", 2 economic historians discovered that, according to this type of accounting, a large section of the rural and urban population would have been unable to survive. In years of dearth, wages were insufficient to feed a family. 3 In many parts of Europe, even the majority of peasant farms did 1. According to a famous contemporary definition, the "labouring poor' were "those whose daily labour is necessary for their daily support", and "whose daily subsistence absolutely depends on the daily unremitting exertion of manual labour": Frederic Morton Eden, 4 Historians studying poor relief, on the other hand, have found that the help provided by these institutions was clearly not enough to overcome the misery of the masses. Despite broad variations between different cities, towns, regions, and countries, and the major changes in welfare institutions between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, the number of people receiving support and the amount of help per person or family, were generally too low to make up for the shortfall. This is true even of England, which, under the Old Poor Law, has been called a "welfare state in miniature" and probably had "the most comprehensive system of public support" in the early modern period. 5 Findings like the ones described above, together with more general changes in historiography, and current social and political problems such as the welfare state's transformation and possible dismantling, have shifted the focus of research. Instead of trying to delineate a broad aggregate picture of the poor or showing the proliferation of welfare institutions and unveiling their disciplining purposes, scholars have started looking more closely at what the people on the margin of subsistence actually did to survive. In the process, historians quickly discovered that many of the labouring poor had not just one occupation but several, and that they shifted from one activity to another in a seasonal pattern, or according to perio...
In the parish of Belm, Northwest Germany, population trebled between 1650 and 1830, but the number of peasant holdings remained stable. A new class of people without real property came into existence. Protoindustrialization in the form of linen production supplemented incomes from agriculture. This article outlines social differentials in demographic behavior and household structure. It looks at social mobility and the selection of mates. Furthermore, it explores the economic and non-economic ties that bound together propertied and propertyless families. Finally, it asks how important kinship was for propertied peasants and for landless people. It suggests that kin relationships across classes or within class may have been a factor relevant in the formation of classes.
"Current models of the European demo-economic system in pre-industrial times are based on strong assumptions about the predominant patterns of individual life courses. Now recent micro-studies of individual communities make it possible to check whether the actual patterns of life fit these assumptions. The findings for Belm present an amazing blend of confirmations and contradictions. In particular, the connection between marriage and the formation of a new self-supporting household is subject to doubt. Together with the findings of other micro-studies, the evidence for Belm suggests that the assumptions about mechanisms linking marriage to economic resources should be reconsidered, and that there is need for a dialogue between macro-theories and micro-history."
Cet article tend à évaluer la riche moisson de recherches parues depuis une quinzaine d'années à propos de trois aspects importants des hypothéses originelles concernant la proto-industrialisation. Les auteurs proposent d'importantes modifications du modèle démographique de la proto-industrialisation. Puis ils se penchent sur des problèmes négligés jusqu'ici, concernant notamment les groupes engagés dans des activités proto-industrielles et l'interpénétration des activités agricoles et de l'industrie à domicile. Ils examinent enfin la coexistence et la rivalité simultanée entre proto-industrie ou industrie à domicile d'une part et industrie mécanisée d'autre part, situation qui a survécu jusqu'en plein vingtiéme siécle.
It is generally agreed that, in most European countries, practical education became increasingly important for future physicians and surgeons during the course of the eighteenth century. Recent studies have shown that, around 1800, clinical teaching took place in a variety of contexts: hospitals with inpatients, polyclinics or outpatient dispensaries, consultation hours for poor people, private tutoring by, or a kind of apprenticeship with, an experienced practitioner. 1 While these organizational forms have become fairly clear in several countries, much less is known about what ''practical'' training actually meant. Did it mainly consist of ''studying written case histories'', 2 or following ''clinical lectures'' in the classroom where the teacher brought in patients and explained their diseases? Did students attend the hospital rounds of professors and hospital physicians, or did they ''walk the wards'' on their own? To what extent were medical students allowed to question patients, and physically examine them? Were they given responsibility for patients under the supervision of a professor or an experienced physician? If so, how many patients did they examine or treat during their education? It is true that we know the regulations of some medical schools at specific points in time, but we have much less knowledge about how these rules were implemented. The few surviving memoirs, diaries and travel accounts make clear that there may have been a considerable gap between norms and practice. A major constraining factor was of course the number of students per patient, and per teacher. Detailed archival and printed sources from the lying-in hospital of Göttingen University allow a deeper insight into the practice of clinical teaching during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this period, when midwifery was being transformed into # J€ u urgen Schlumbohm 2007
Medical men, turning to midwifery in the eighteenth century, claimed that they were able to save the lives of mothers and children, jeopardized by "ignorant" midwives. Consequentially, modern scholars have tried to assess the progress of obstetrics and the merits of lying-in hospitals on the basis of maternal and, more rarely, perinatal mortality rates. The data and methodological problems involved, however, have been largely ignored. Here they are discussed in the light of a micro-study based on detailed archival evidence from Göttingen University's lying-in hospital, founded in 1751. Its mortality data are analyzed in comparison to those from other German and some foreign maternity hospitals. In a further step, perinatal and maternal mortality in hospitals is compared to that in normal home deliveries, attended by female midwives. By linking the findings to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates about the pros and cons of lying-in hospitals, further questions are raised.
Drawing on the admission records, the medical casebooks and the publications of its director, this article explores how the University of Göttingen's maternity hospital achieved its three official goals: teaching medical students, training female midwives, and providing shelter for needy parturient women. Since educating medical men was the most important aim of the hospital, the paper particularly focuses on how the demands of instruction shaped day-to-day obstetrical practices, especially under the directorship of Professor Friedrich Benjamin Osiander (1792-1822). He was a keen advocate of the forceps, whereas the first director, Professor Johann Georg Roederer (1751-63), had taken a moderate, that is a much less interventionist, approach to obstetrics. Osiander avowedly was determined to subordinate the parturient women to the demands of the clinic and to treat them as 'living manikins'. In spite of that, there is evidence that the pregnant and parturient women, most of whom were unmarried and from the lower classes, made use of the lying-in hospital for their own purposes, and that sometimes they refused to play the role assigned to them. The link between the maternity hospital and the rise of the man-midwife and of 'scientific' obstetrics appears to have been particularly strong in the case of Göttingen and other German university hospitals, compared with lying-in hospitals in other countries where the link was more indirect.
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