Birth of Midwifery, Circa 100 CE

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"Around 100 CE, a Greek physician of the Roman Empire known as Soranus of Ephesus wrote several books on medicine, compiling the knowledge of the day into volumes on anatomy, disease, surgery, and pharmacology, among other subjects. His most enduring work, On Midwifery and the Diseases of Women, covered female reproduction from conception through newborn care, including new solutions to old problems. It would remain the gold standard for obstetrics and gynecology until significant scientific strides were made during the Enlightenment 1,500 years later. ...
Laboring mothers were attended by midwives who themselves had given birth and gained knowledge through experience. Doctors were rarely involved in the birthing process, even in complicated cases, because gynecology was considered beneath them. But Soranus argued that, in addition to being clean and literate, midwives should be trained in basic medicine in order to properly care for an expectant mother and her child. ...

His is the first known description of a technique for turning a baby whose back is covering the birth canal, a situation known as a transverse position that until that point had nearly always ended in the baby’s death. By reaching into the uterus and pulling on the baby’s legs to manipulate it into a breech, or feet-first, position, the delivery became merely tricky, rather than impossible.

Among his other innovations, Soranus developed a birthing chair with stirrups, and protocols for cutting the umbilical cord and cleaning the stump and for removing blood clots from the uterus following delivery of the placenta. ..."

Birth of Midwifery, Circa 100 CE | The Scientist Magazine® Soranus of Ephesus’s manual shaped the way midwifery was practiced for more than a millennium.