Advice Concerning Pregnancy and Health in Late Medieval Europe: Peasant Women’s Wisdom in The Distaff Gospels

Abstract

Abstract. This paper explores an area which has proven difficult for scholars to penetrate: women's popular wisdom concerning medical matters in the later medieval period. Contextualized within an examination of medieval medical texts both by and about women, our discussion focuses on a later 15th-century French work, The Distaff Gospels. This text, published recently in English for the first time since 1510, consists of more than 200 pieces of advice or "gospels," ostensibly conveyed to one another by a group of women who met together during the long winter evenings to spin. A significant portion of the advice might be considered "medical" in nature; it is grouped into two broad categories: pregnancy and health. We conclude that although our text is male mediated, it provides a reliable and valuable guide to peasant women's medical lore during this period.Résumé. Cet article aborde un domaine qui reste encore peu accessible aux chercheurs, celui des connaissances médicales des femmes du peuple au Moyen Age, notamment à la campagne. Placée dans le contexte des traités médiévaux sur la santé des femmes, éventuellement composés par des femmes, notre présentation est centrée sur un texte français de la fin du Moyen Age, les Évangiles des Quenouilles. Cette oeuvre rassemble une collection de plus de 200 « évangiles », exemples de leur savoir traditionnel, échangés par un groupe de villageoises qui se rencontraient pour filer durant les longues soirées d'hiver. Une portion significative de ce savoir est de nature médicale. Il peut se répartir en deux catégories. La première concerne les questions reliées à la grossesse et à la santé des enfants ; la seconde traite de la santé en général, avec des façons Author, position

The psychology and social dynamics of fetal sex prognostication in China: Evidence from historical data

“…Given the strong demand, it is not surprising that fetal sex prognostication 3 is found in many historic cultures and contemporary small‐scale societies. Ancient Egyptians, for example, predicted whether a woman would give birth to a boy or a girl by having her urinate on both wheat and spelt seeds and examining which would grow (Dawson, 1929); 4 the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates thought that the coloration of the eye and the relative size of the breast of the pregnant woman indicates fetal sex (Forbes, 1959); in Europe, the medieval text Distaff Gospels suggests many methods for predicting the sex of the fetus, including examining which foot the pregnant woman uses to take a first step (Garay and Jeay, 2007). 5 Written records of fetal sex prognostication remain scant in small‐scale societies, yet ethnographers have documented plenty of folk methods for predicting the sex of a baby (Naik, 1956; Popov, 1946).…”