Phantoms in the Classroom: Midwifery Training in Enlightenment Europe

Abstract

I n critiquing the replica of a pregnant woman used by her rival, the Englishmidwife Elizabeth Nihell went so far as to describe it as a “wooden statue, representing awomanwith child, whose belly was of leather, in which a bladder full, perhaps, of small beer, represented the uterus.” The rival she disparaged was the Scottish manmidwife William Smellie, who employed this replica to demonstrate birthing maneuvers in his courses. “This bladder was stopped with a cork,” added Nihell, “to which was fastened a string of packthread to tap it, occasionally, and demonstrate in a palpable manner the flowing of the red-coloured waters [and] in the middle of the bladder was a wax-doll, to which were given various positions.” For the Scotsman known as the father of British midwifery, use of such teaching mannequins was no laughing matter. By his own account, Smellie had trained some nine hundred students on his “automaton or machine.” In fact, what Nihell and Smellie disagreed onmore fundamentally than the virtues of this demonstration dummywas if—and if so, how liberally—instruments like forceps should be used in childbirth. Nihell objected to Smellie’s “instrumentarian” approach and the cre-