The Hidden Truths of the Belly:

The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe

Society for the Social History of Medicine Student Prize Essay
1999, Runner-up
By CATHY MCCLI VE*
SUMMARY. For early modern men and women and their medical practitioners, the
experience and understanding of pregnancy was primarily uncertain. This uncertainty
extended to the whole process of pregnancyfrom the moment of conception to delivery,
the detection and bearing of a true fruit was doubtful. This uncertainty was heightened
by the fact that both body and language could conceal the truth. The woman herself was
frequently uncertain and could be mistaken in her interpretation of the condition of her
belly. This ambiguity is expressed in the vague and faltering language used to describe such
experiences. Womens bodies were believed to conceal the truth more readily than their
male counterparts. Equally a womans physical narrative was more likely to be distrusted.
Tensions surrounding the appropriate nature of womens knowledge of such hidden
secrets also affected the ways in which women and their practitioners described the truths
of the belly. This article traces the ambiguities faced by women and their midwives/
accoucheurs through three areas of pregnancy: quickening, false conceptions, and the threat
of miscarriage. The much-neglected source of medical texts and observations is drawn
upon, alongside letters and diaries and judicial material.
KEYWORDS: corporeal uncertainty, pregnancy, medical expert, quickening, moles, mis-
carriage, matron, belly, female body, womens knowledge.
In 1666, a crowd gathered outside the Louvre in Paris to witness an execution by
hanging and dissection. As legally required in a capital sentence, the condemned
female had previously been examined by medical experts,
1
in order to determine
that she was not with child. Owing to the presence of some menstrual blood she
was declared to be not pregnant. However, the dissection afterwards revealed the
tragic truth that she had indeed been four months pregnant and that her innocent
unborn infant had perished with her. This incident scandalized the crowd. Franois
Mauriceau, senior surgeon/midwife at the Htel Dieu, recounted the case in his
pioneering Trait des Maladies des Femmes Grosses et Accouches (1668).
2
Mauriceaus
2002 The Society for the Social History of Medicine
* Warwick University, Coventry, CV4 7AL. E-mail: c.e.mcclive@warwick.ac.uk or 74 Boulevard
Voltaire, Paris 75011, France. E-mail: catherine.mc-clive@wanadoo.fr
1
The term expert, signifying un homme expert, derived from the Latin expertus, entered the
French language in the sixteenth century. Similarly, expertise was common from 1580 onwards. See
Le Petit Robert: Dictionnaire de Langue Franaise (Paris, 1992), p. 734.
2
Franois Mauriceau, Trait des Maladies des Femmes Grosses et Accouches (Paris, 1668), pp. 656.
Although Mauriceaus work inevitably contains an element of self-promotion, he attacked
incompetence in general, be it of a male or female practitioner, or indeed the judiciary, rather than any
specic group. His account of this incident is found in a general section warning of the uncertainties of
pregnancy. For the midwifes role in determining pregnancy, see E. H. Ackerknecht, Midwives
as Experts in Court, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 10 (1976), 12248, especially
pp. 12256; T. R. Forbes, A Jury of Matrons, Medical History, 31 (1988), 2333.
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horror at the crime was exacerbated by his observation that it is not unusual for
women to bleed in the early months of pregnancy.
3
Corporeal uncertainty, whilst it has not gone entirely unnoticed by historians,
is a subject worthy of more thorough attention than it has previously been
accorded in much early modern historiography. Whilst some historians have
touched upon the uncertainties of pregnancy, a more detailed study of this
important topic is lacking.
4
Instead, recent research has tended to focus on two
main areas of childbirth: the scene of the birth itself and the nature of professional
rivalries between male and female midwives.
5
Such analyses do not tell the whole
story and, indeed, preclude a richer understanding of the process of pregnancy.
Other studies have concentrated on the socio-economic and legal constructions of
illegitimacy and the crime of infanticide as a means to understanding early modern
attitudes towards pregnancy.
6
For instance, the work of Mark Jackson and Laura
Gowing on birth and death debates in English infanticide trials has emphasized the
role of female pregnancy narratives.
7
Jackson and Gowing describe depositions in
which women claimed to have been delivered of strange lumps or bloody dis-
charges rather than infants. However, since in the majority of cases infant corpses
were discovered, these testimonies appear to have been deliberate strategies.
Although Gowing and Jackson discuss the socio-economic reasons for these
accused womens strategies, they overlook the full extent of the role of physical
uncertainty.
8
I shall argue that the ambiguities surrounding the understanding of pregnancy
extended to the whole experience, not just the birth scenewhether it was a
natural, successful birth, an attempted abortion, or a murdered new-born infant.
3
Mauriceau, Trait, p. 66.
4
For example, M. Laget, Naissances: lAccouchement avant lAge de la Clinique (Tours, 1982), alludes
to the ambiguous state of pregnancy, but fails to develop it further. A remarkable study, which
examines the problem of infanticide from the point of view of corporeal uncertainty for the
nineteenth century, is A. Tillier, Des Criminelles au Village: Femmes Infanticides en Bretagne (18251865)
(Rennes, 2001), see especially pp. 293326.
5
Among the numerous studies focusing on the dynamics of the lying-in room, see P. Crawford,
The Construction and Experience of Maternity in Seventeenth-Century England, in V. Fildes (ed.),
Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England. Essays in Memory of Dorothy McLaren (London and New
York, 1990), 338; A. Wilson, The Ceremony of Childbirth and its Interpretation, ibid., 68107;
L. Pollock, Childbearing and Female-Bonding in Early Modern England, Social History, 22 (1997),
286306. On the professional nature of midwifery and rivalry between male and female midwives,
see the collection of essays edited by H. Marland, The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe
(London and New York, 1993); A. Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in Early Modern
England 16601770 (London, 1995).
6
See, for example, J. Depauw, Illicit Sexual Activity and Society in Eighteenth-Century Nantes,
in R. Forster and O. Ranum (eds), Family and Society (Baltimore, 1976), 14591; C. Fairchilds,
Female Sexual Attitudes and the Rise of Illegitimacy: A Case Study, Journal of Interdisciplinary History,
8 (19778), 62767.
7
L. Gowing, Secret Births and Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century England, Past and Present, 156
(1997), 87115; M. Jackson, Something More than Blood: Conicting Accounts of Pregnancy
Loss in Eighteenth-Century England, in R. Cecil (ed.), The Anthropology of Pregnancy Loss (Oxford
and Washington, 1996), 197214.
8
Jackson discusses the medical uncertainty surrounding the problem of proof of a live or still birth,
but does not extend this to the process of pregnancy. Similarly, Gowing notes the ambiguity at the
moment of delivery, but not during the preceding months.
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02 SHM 15/2 p209-227 FIN 5/7/02 7:11 am Page 210
This ambivalence was also reected in the language used to describe the process of
pregnancy. Medical practitioners, ordinary men and women and, in some cases,
legal experts were, as we shall see, aware of the paradoxical and ckle nature of
the signs of pregnancy itself. Moreover, the medical and corporeal ambiguities of
the female body, and particularly pregnancy, were important factors in the con-
struction of such tales. Uncertainty was not simply a socially-constructed guise
employed by unmarried women, but a medical and physical reality experienced by
early modern women and recorded by their medical practitioners. Ambiguities
were, in essence, the vehicles for these womens stories. Women, married or
single, did not always lie when they told stories about their bodies. However, they
were not always believed because the female body conceals truths in ways that the
male body does not, and pregnancy is one example of this. At the same time, it was
only possible for women accused of infanticide to construct narratives about lumps
and stillbirths because such things could and did happen.
In this article I will investigate the uncertainty shared by learned medical
practitioners, midwives, and ordinary women in understanding the external and
internal signs of pregnancy in the female body. This uncertainty extends to the
historian faced with skewed and opaque sources. Recent medical developments
mean that, today, pregnancy is often interpreted as a linear progression from con-
ception to delivery. Modern medicine underplays many of the innate uncertainties
and highlights scientic truths. Rather than chronicle the positivist progress of
obstetrics, I hope to present a fuller understanding of the doubts surrounding
conception and pregnancy in the early modern world. To begin with, I will
demonstrate exactly how a close analysis or unpacking of the exceptional 1666
incident reveals the normality of the anxieties found therein. The article will then
concentrate on three specic issues faced by the pregnant woman and her midwife
that recur frequently in the medical literature. I will look rst at perceptions of
quickening (internal foetal movements). The next problem, once motion in the
matrix was established, was to determine whether the belly contained a true or
false fruit. Upon diagnosing a true pregnancy and a healthy foetus, the woman
and her medical practitioner were then faced with the third problem of avoiding
miscarriage. Although this article will mainly draw on material relating to France,
these ambiguities were common throughout early modern Europe.
The Exceptional Normal Moment of 1666
Exceptional normal
9
moments in history, such as this 1666 incident, are useful to
the historian because they indicate new meanings and perspectives that may
otherwise be ignored. Any trial document or scandalous incident necessarily deals
with individuals and events that have been declared anomalous by their contem-
poraries. However, the qualitative approach of micro-history provides a means to
address contemporary ideas about what was considered normal or exceptional.
Mauriceaus account of the 1666 incident helps us to investigate these issues. His
9
E. Grendi cited by C. Ginzburg, Micro-History: Two or Three Things that I Know About It,
Critical Inquiry, 20 (1993), 1035, p. 33.
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testimony highlights the lay and medical difculties involved in determining
pregnancy and the responsibility of the judiciary to identify the existence of a fetus.
An examination of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medical literature suggests
that this incident was not as exceptional as it may seem at rst glance. On the
contrary, the uncertainties surrounding the female body, and the belly in
particular, were widely recognized. Detecting pregnancy was not easy; the most
common signs, a swelling belly, cessation of menstruation, and quickening, were
ambivalent and open to interpretation. It was often hard to differentiate between
a true and a false pregnancy. Even the woman herself could be unsure and
midwives might misinterpret symptoms.
10
Jacques Guillemeau, Ambroise Pars
protg, who wrote in the early 1600s, feared that he might assure a woman of her
pregnancy, only to see her menses ow, winds erupt from her matrix, and her
stomach atten.
11
Similarly, his contemporary, Louise Bourgeois, royal midwife to
Marie de Medicis, observed that there were many pregnant women for whom all
the signs of pregnancy were absent.
12
Uncertainty was thus an intrinsic and
accepted part of the early modern understanding of the process of pregnancy.
These ambiguities began at the moment of conception. The pregnant woman and
her practitioner had to be aware of such uncertainties and their potential dangers.
As Mauriceau himself testied, pregnancy was a stormy sea, on which the
pregnant woman and her infant drift[ed] for the duration of nine whole months.
13
In order to contextualize the 1666 incident, a brief explanation of the legal
connotations associated with quickening and fetal development is useful here. The
tradition of Roman law prohibited the execution of pregnant women.
14
This
legislation was based upon the theological assumption that, once a foetus had moved
in the womb, it was ensouled. Thus, all condemned females were to be visited
15
to avoid the murder of an innocent, rational soul. The language of quickening
played an integral role in the trials of women indicted for all crimes, not just those
charged with infanticide or abortion. This precise legal status assigned to quicken-
ing illustrates the fact that it was the most easily discernible sign of pregnancy.
16
Quickening was perceived by midwives to happen at any time from two months
onwards, but it had generally occurred by four months. Awareness that the
majority of miscarriages occurred during the rst three months may have contri-
buted to this tendency to trust quickening as the most certain proof of pregnancy.
Mauriceau stressed the horric nature of the courts neglect of duty in 1666 by
10
All translations are my own. Mauriceau, Trait, pp. 105, 371.
11
J. Guillemeau, De la Grossesse et Accouchement des Femmes, du Gouvernement dicelles et Moyen de
Survenir aux Accidents qui leur Arrivent (Paris, 1620), p. 2.
12
L. Bourgeois, Observations sur la Sterilit, Perte de Fruict, Fecondit, Accouchements, et Maladies des
Femmes et Enfants Nouveaux Naiz (Paris, 1617), pp. 512, 63, 242.
13
Mauriceau, Aphorismes touchant la Grossesse, lAccouchement, les Maladies et autres Dispositions des
Femmes (Amsterdam, 1700), p. 58, no. 100. L. Pollock uses a translation of this citation in an article on
the ills of pregnancy, Embarking on a Rough Passage. The Experience of Pregnancy in Early Modern
England, in Fildes, Women as Mothers, 3967.
14
Ackerknecht, Midwives as Experts, p. 1225.
15
The physical examination of the females private parts was commonly referred to as a visit, or
visitation, in medical and legal contexts. As far as I am aware, it had no religious connotations.
16
M. Laget stresses the importance of quickening as a sign of pregnancy, Naissances, p. 43.
212 Cathy McClive
02 SHM 15/2 p209-227 FIN 5/7/02 7:11 am Page 212
pinpointing the crowds recognition of the fetal age at four months. At this stage,
therefore, the infant should have been quick, have had a soul, and resembled a
human infant with arms and legs. By mentioning the infants age, Mauriceau also
accentuated the role of the executed woman, bringing the question of her own
perception of her body into play.
Catherine Thaives had been condemned to death on 13 November 1665 when
she pleaded benet of the belly, declaring herself to be pregnant and with
child.
17
She was duly examined by two sages-femmes jures from Chtelet, Marie
Garnier and Marie Bousier, who found no sign of pregnancy even though they
recognized that the matrix was heavily dilated.
18
On 31 December 1665, Garnier
and Bousier were formally relieved of their status as sages-femmes and forbidden, on
pain of exemplary punishment, from carrying out any of their former duties. The
scandal sent shock waves throughout medical and legal circles in France and was
recounted as a warning to expert witnesses up to a century later.
19
For instance,
the juriste Devaux (1703), stressed that one cannot overly advise surgeons to be
prudent and circumspect in matters of instructing judges about the condition of
women, injured or criminal.
20
Devaux, Mauriceau, and the surgeon Nicolas
Venette (1702), all cited the presence of menstrual uid as the source of the error,
accusing the midwives of having confused the bloody discharge with regular
menstruation which they then assumed discounted the possibility of pregnancy.
Inevitably, the competition for epistemological superiority between surgeons-
accoucheurs and midwives is recalled here. Both groups, however, were equally
aware that pregnant women could bleed after conception. Strikingly, none of the
accounts mentioned the plea of Catherine Thaives. Perhaps her word was held to
be as uncertain, or as deceptive, as her body.
This incident begs a series of questions about how thoroughly Thaives was
examined and whether this entailed an internal or solely external physical visita-
tion. An analysis of the medical beliefs associated with uterine bleeding and
quickening can shed light on the role of the medical expert and the problematic
nature of bodily knowledge. It was not considered usual in this period for male
practitioners to examine, closely and personally, the bodies of their female
patients,
21
although attouchement is something that Mauriceau championed and
17
Factum Thaives Catherine (1665). Pices Relatives un Faux Rapport fait par Marie Bousier, Veuve de
Pierre Loudier, et Marie Garnier, Femme de Pierre Bureau, Jures Matrones, p. 1. Mauriceaus placing of the
incident in 1666 instead of late 1665 can perhaps be explained by the proximity of the court verdict
against the midwives to the New Year.
18
Ibid.
19
The case is cited in texts of medical jurisprudence and more general surgical and medical works.
See M. Devaux, LArt de Faire les Rapports en Chirurgie (Paris, 1703), pp. 43740; M. Prevost, Principes
de Jurisprudence sur les Visites et Rapports Judiciaires des Medecins, Chirurgiens, Apothicaires et Sages-Femmes
(Paris, 1753), p. 86; N. Venette, De la Generation de lHomme, ou Tableau dAmour Conjugal (Cologne,
1702), p. 90; J. Verdier, La Jurisprudence de la Medecine en France ou Trait Historique et Juridique des
Etablissemens, Reglemens, Police, Devoirs, Fonctions, Honneurs, Droits et Privileges des Trois Corps de
Medecine (Alenon, 1763), pp. 3323. The English traveller, Montgomery, also recorded the incident.
See J. Oldham, On Pleading the Belly: A History of the Jury of Matrons, Criminal History, 6
(1985), 164, p. 24.
20
Devaux, Lart de Faire les Rapports, pp. 43740.
21
In some cases families even refused autopsies on the bodies of female relatives to safeguard their
modesty and pudeur.
The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe 213
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claimed to perform almost without fail. Mauriceau believed that it was the
responsibility of the medical practitioner to elucidate the cause and provenance of
bleeding from down below. An internal examination, to determine whether the
bleeding stemmed from the matrix or the cervix, should be conducted. The nature
of the blood loss should be assessed to see whether it was corrupt and acrimonious,
or simply superuous menses. Its abundance, considered with reference to the
womans usual menstrual ow, should indicate the cause and appropriate action.
22
A misdiagnosis could, as we have seen, be fatal. At what stage then, if any, could a
woman and her practitioner have been sure of her condition?
Mauriceaus account of this exceptional normal moment raises important
questions about how such uncertainty affects an understanding of the history of
the early modern body. The framing of this exceptional normal moment in
Mauriceaus treatise underlines the utility and limitations of medical texts for such
a history.
23
In addition to the obstacles posed by the historians own conceptions of
the body in the light of contemporary medicine, direct perceptions of early
modern bodies can be difcult to access through the sources. The female body is
particularly problematic, since it is frequently glimpsed through the language of
the male medical practitioner or refracted by the legal clerk. The womans own
perceptions, as in the 1666 incident, can often only be deduced.
24
Hence, the
female-authored texts that do survive are all the more valuable. Perhaps the case
was both a scandal and an event, which Mauriceau turned to his advantage. It is
possible, for example, that, by recounting the exceptional incident of 1666,
Mauriceau and the others were capitalizing on the judicial travesty to heighten
their own skill and reputation. The tragedy of 1666 may have been an unfortunate
mistake. It is, however, perhaps more surprising that this kind of case did not occur
with greater frequency. In this case, public dissection was part of the punishment.
However, other executed corpses may have been removed to private venues or
anatomy theatres before being opened up. It may be that the bellies of other
executed women, who were dissected privately, contained hidden fruits which
were either unrecorded or simply unnoticed.
25
Quickening
Quickening, as conrmation of the presence of a foetus in the womb, was a subject
that attracted much controversy in the early modern world and has proved no less
22
Mauriceau, Trait, pp. 1512.
23
A. McLaren makes the point that medical case notes and observations are an incredibly rich and
under-exploited resource for the history of medicine, Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility in
England from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1984), p. 11.
24
Unfortunately the factum provides no further details of Thaives own perceptions, nor her
reasons for believing herself to be pregnant. Duden argues that perceptions of midwives and physicians
could be similar to those of their patients; B. Duden, The Woman Beneath the Skin: A Doctors Patients in
Eighteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, MA and London, 1991), pp. 94, 1424, 147.
25
The problematic of dissection has been raised recently by Mark Jenner in his criticism of
J. Sawday, The Body Emblazoned (London, 1995). See his Body, Image and Text in Early Modern
Europe. Review Essay, Social History of Medicine, 12 (1999), 14354, especially pp. 1445. To a great
extent the results of dissection were open to interpretation; see T. Laqueur, Making Sex, Body and
Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Harvard, 1990), pp. 828.
214 Cathy McClive
02 SHM 15/2 p209-227 FIN 5/7/02 7:11 am Page 214
problematic for historians.
26
Early modern medical and legal discourses concerning
pregnancy were often contradictory, attaching different levels of signicance to
quickening. Quickening was, as we have seen, afforded a special legal status as the
denitive proof of a living foetus. The medical literature did not deny the import-
ance of quickening in the diagnosis of pregnancy, but underlined the difculties
of detecting foetal movement. This tension has been absent thus far from the
historiographical discussions of pregnancy.
27
The problem of quickening raises issues of the ownership of knowledge. What
made someone an expert in quickening? Was it gender, personal experience, or
formal training? In the early stages of quickening, only the mother would have
been able to feel the foetal movements. At any stage, the pregnant womans
narrative about quickening was based on her subjective interpretation of internal
foetal movements, whereas a medical practitioner (male or female) listened and felt
externally, but perhaps no less subjectively. Nevertheless, neither male nor female
midwives accepted that the pregnant womans epistemological advantage invalid-
ated their scientic role as expert. Contemporary male and female medical
authors recognized the centrality of quickening, however uncertain, in the
detection of pregnancy. For example, Laurent Joubert (1578), Par (1585), and
Guillemeau (1620), all accentuated the importance of quickening in the detection
of pregnancy.
28
Similarly, Bourgeois argued that these movements are easy to
judge for those (midwives) who know what they are doing.
29
Inexperience and
ignorance were cited as causes for misjudgement, regardless of gender, by male and
female medical authors.
30
The necessity of personal, corporeal experience of quickening in order to
qualify as an expert seems doubtful, given the fact that childless women could also
act as midwives. This seems to have held true throughout the early modern period.
For example, Eleanor Willoughby practised in England from the age of 15 in 1654,
until she married. The Prussian midwife, Justine Siegemund, practising in the later
years of the seventeenth century, was childless, having had only a false preg-
nancy.
31
The high-prole Madame du Coudray, who toured France in the 1760s
26
See the discussions in B. Duden, Disembodying Woman: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn
(Cambridge, MA and London, 1993), pp. 801. McLaren discusses the medico-legal concept of
quickening in the context of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates surrounding the
ownership of medical knowledge. See his Reproductive Rituals, pp. 10711, 13843. M. Laget,
Naissances, p. 43, stresses the importance of quickening as a sign of pregnancy.
27
The complex relations between medical and legal perceptions of the proofs of pregnancy lie
outside the scope of this paper.
28
Guillemeau, De la Grossesse, p. 7; L. Joubert, Popular Errors (trans. G. D. de Rocher) (Tuscaloosa
and London, 1989), p. 154; Mauriceau, Trait, pp. 767; A. Par, Les Oeuvres dAmbroise Par Conseiller
et Premier Chirurgien du Roy, 4th edn (Paris, 1585), p. 29.
29
Bourgeois, Observations, p. 9.
30
Mauriceau, Trait, p. 67.
31
L. Tatlock, Speculum Feminarum: Gendered Perspectives on Obstetrics and Gynaecology in
Early Modern Germany, Signs, 17 (1992), 72560, p. 746. W. Pulz argues that Siegemund turned this
to her advantage: Aux Origines de lObsttrique Moderne en Allemagne (XVIXVIII). Accoucheurs
contre Matrones?, Revue dHistoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 434 (1996), 593617. A. Wilson, A
Memorial of Eleanor Willoughby. A Seventeenth-Century Midwife, in L. Hunter and S. Hutton
(eds), Women, Science and Medicine 15001700 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1997), 13877; especially
pp. 1578.
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teaching midwifery and who has been hailed by her biographer, Nina Gelbart, as
the founder of modern obstetrics, was both single and childless.
32
Thus, rsthand
experience of pregnancy and quickening were not prerequisites for expertise in
midwifery.
The vocabulary of quickening, however, appeared frequently in court docu-
ments. Medical reports reveal cases when women were physically assessed for signs
of pregnancy. Conceptions of pregnancy and quickening emerged through the
investigations of the accused and the verdicts of the matron-jurors. Relations
between the woman and the medical expert were played out in the dynamics of
courtroom conicts. Yet just how expert were these expert witnesses in the
matter of quickening? On the continent, a practising midwife or surgeon would
examine the defendant, whereas in England a jury of matrons empanelled from the
local community would do so.
33
Strictly speaking, a woman seeking benet of the
belly needed to be with quick child rather than young or barely with child in
order to receive a stay of execution, although there were exceptions when the
womans condition was uncertain.
34
Catherine Thaives was not afforded this
privilege, however.
Historians, such as Thomas Forbes and James Cockburn, have questioned the
competence of the English matron-jurors. They regard the plea of pregnancy
merely as a mechanism for reprieve.
35
Women under threat of sentencing had
every reason to attempt to deceive the court by pleading pregnancy. However,
what historians have taken as deliberate deceit may well, in some cases, have been
uncertainty on the part of the accused and the matrons or experts. Forbes and
Cockburns view disregards the medical literature and does not take into account
the fact that the matrons appear to have been very conscientious. While the reports
of the matron-juries have not survived, the records of their verdicts demonstrate
that few women were pardoned on the Home Circuit c. 15601700 following a
successful plea of the belly.
36
Some were executed after delivery, while others
remained in prison indenitely.
37
Not all the women examined were found
pregnant.
38
Moreover, the recording of split verdicts, when the same jury of
32
N. Gelbart, The Kings Midwife. A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray (Berkeley, Los
Angeles and London, 1998), pp. 15, 20.
33
Forbes, A Jury of Matrons, p. 26; Oldham, On Pleading the Belly, p. 5. Ackerknecht,
Midwives as Experts, pp. 12268, discusses the requirements for continental witnesses.
34
Public Record Ofce, Kew, Assizes 35/55/6 m.1 Mary Allen, 1613. (Henceforth PRO, ASSI)
Translated by J. S. Cockburn, Calendar of Assize Records: Surrey Indictments James I (London, 1982), case
615 (henceforth Home Circuit calendars cited as Calendar + County + Monarch).
35
J. S. Cockburn, Calendar of Assize Records. Home Circuit Indictments Elizabeth I and James I
Introduction (London, 1985), pp. 35, 1212; Forbes, A Jury of Matrons, p. 23.
36
See PRO, ASSI 35/3/1, m. 18, Millicent Shelley, March 1561, Cockburn, Calendar: Surrey,
Elizabeth I (London, 1980), case 77; PRO, ASSI 35/4/2, m. 7, Isabel Wylson, July 1562, ibid., case
120; PRO ASSI 25/4/2, m. 15, Agnes Dye, ibid., case 128, were all pardoned in 1563. PRO, ASSI
35/22/2 m. 5 Alice Haydon, remanded March 1580, pardoned 1581, idem, Calendar: Hertfordshire,
Elizabeth I (London, 1975), case 189, PRO, ASSI 35/53/1, m. 19 Elizabeths Wade and Beale,
February 1611, pardoned at the following assizes, idem, Calendar: Sussex: James I (London, 1975), case
587.
37
Cockburn, Introduction, p. 123; Oldham, On Pleading the Belly, pp. 3, 1920.
38
There is insufcient room here to list all the cases and women individually. However, roughly
5 women were pardoned, 53 were afforded benet of the belly and 53 were found not pregnant.
216 Cathy McClive
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matrons examined several women at the same session, indicates a level of rigour
and discernment.
39
The matrons knowledge was not inferior to that of the
formally trained and certied expert.
The expertise of so-called matrons could also play a role in France, despite the
different legal system which, as we saw above, normally demanded that a formally-
trained surgeon or midwife testify as the expert witness. A factum from 1703
detailing the case of Michelle Mabilles disputed pregnancy and alleged infanticide
in the justice of Vert, near Chartres, is a particularly rich source.
40
Despite three
ofcial visitations, certied midwives and surgeons failed to mention quickening.
Two individual midwives reported (on two separate visits eight to ten days apart in
August 1702) that Mabille was two and a half and three and a half months pregnant
respectively.
41
The third visit was conducted by Jean Lesaureau, mdecin-ordinaire
du Roy, Charles Sanson and Jacques Frizon, chirurgiens jurs, and Franoise
Pichard, sage-femme jure, on 6 June 1703. They judged that she had not carried a
child, at least not to the natural term, and that they could not be sure whether she
had maintained a pregnancy or had suffered a miscarriage.
42
However, a previous,
unofcial visit by the midwife, Pichard, in August of 1702, had apparently revealed
some signs of quickening. Pichards individual report was not heard in court,
presumably for obvious reasons.
43
Arguably, the extent of confusion surrounding
the conclusions of the various reports, the lack of consensus, and the obvious
discrepancies in dating the term of Mabilles condition suggest that she was not in
fact pregnant, but suffering from an indisposition that made her appear to be with
child. Moreover, the contradictory reports indicate the uncertainty and difculty
of diagnosing pregnancy and quickening, even for the formally-trained practitioner.
Given the inability of expert medical testimony to clarify the affair, the factum
of 1703 turned to the testimonies of ordinary members of the community in its
attempt to uncover whether or not la Mabille had been quick with child. Some of
these neighbours swore that la Mabille had told them that she felt her infant
quicken and yet the women who say that they themselves touched her belly and
her breasts [did] not say that they felt the infant quicken, nor that they perceived
that she had any milk.
44
However, Simone Guyart testied that she had put her
hand on la Mabilles belly and that she had seemed pregnant to her, and that she
Further research is needed to consolidate this; preferential survival of indictments, loss of depositions
and the matrons reports may have affected the picture. For the limitations of court records as sources
for social and cultural history, see J. S. Cockburn, Early Modern Assize Records as Historical
Evidence, Journal of Society of Archivists, 5 (19747), 21531; A. Soman, Deviance and Criminal
Justice in Western Europe 13001800, Criminal Justice History (1978), 328, pp. 5, 9.
39
For instance, in July 1600, the jury of matrons reported that, Percivall is pregnant, the others are
not, PRO ASSI 35/42/4 m. 23, Cockburn, Calendar: Herts: Elizabeth I, case 980 and PRO, ASSI
35/105/5, m. 63 idem, Calendar: Kent: Charles II (London, 1995), case 569. See also PRO, ASSI
35/45/1, m. 38, September 1603, 2 pregnant, other not, idem, Calendar: Essex: James I (London,
1982), case 71. There are many others too numerous to list here.
40
A Nosseigneurs de Parlement en la Chambre de la Tournelle Criminelle (Paris, 1703), p. 13.
41
Ibid., pp. 2, 21.
42
Ibid., p. 4.
43
Ibid., p. 21.
44
Ibid., pp. 1213.
The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe 217
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had told her that she could feel her infant moving.
45
It seems that anyone and
everyone was entitled to express an expert opinion on the condition of Mabilles
belly. Perhaps the most qualied of the non-expert witnesses to mention
quickening was the wife of the surgeon, Franois Bigot. However, her marriage to
a surgeon did not necessarily mean that she had more contact with the theory and
practice of midwifery than some of her neighbours. The surgeons wife examined
Mabille at her own request. She reported that having manipulated the unclothed
sides of her belly and having told her to hold her breath to be sure whether she felt
the baby move or not . . . and having felt nothing told her that she did not think
that she was with child at all.
46
The plea for clemency concluded that there had
been no quickening and thus no pregnancy, therefore there could have been no
infanticide. The author of the factum suggested that Mabilles supposed condition
was the product either of trickery or some natural accident, which made her think
herself that she was with child. . . . She too could have been fooled by some signs of
pregnancy; some witnesses suggest that this was the case.
47
It is not surprising, then, that sometimes women themselves found quickening
difcult to ascertain. Indeed, the absence, or tardiness, of the sensation of quicken-
ing did provoke anxiety and doubt about the veracity of the pregnancy. In 1600,
Louise de Coligny wrote a letter to her daughter, Madame de la Trimouille,
speaking of her worries concerning her daughter-in-law, who should be in the
same condition as yourself, but who has still not felt her infant move at all.
48
Conrmation of the pregnancy would be gained only with quickening. In 1652,
Mary, wife of English diarist John Evelyn, was nearly six months pregnant when
she conrmed her being quick. With her second child, Mary recognized the
sensation of fetal movements much sooner.
49
Recorded alongside political
appointments, his wifes quickening was a signicant event for Evelyn. Similarly,
Louise de Savoye recorded retrospectively in her memoirs that on 7 June 1516, her
daughter-in-law, Claude, began to feel in her belly the rst movement of my
(grand) daughter Charlotte. Charlotte was born on 23 October.
50
The timing of
the perception of quickening was particularly important because it often affected
understanding of the natural length of pregnancy and could prevent or provoke
uncertainty about the paternity of the fetus.
51
45
Ibid., p. 23.
46
Ibid., pp. 21, 24.
47
Ibid., p. 20.
48
Correspondance de Louise de Coligny, Princesse dOrange, 15551620 Receuillie par P. Marchegay,
Publie avec Introduction Biographique et Notes par L. Marlet (Geneva, 1970), pp. 1701.
49
E. S. de Beer (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (New York and Toronto, 1959). See diary entries for
7 May 1652, 19 May 1652 p. 320, 24 August 1652 p. 325, 18 May 1653 p. 329, 11 October 1653
p. 332.
50
Journal de Louise de Savoye, Duchesse dAngoulesme, dAnjou et de Valois, Mre du Grand
Roi Franois premier, M. Petitot (ed.), Collection Complte des Mmoires Relatifs lHistoire de France
(Paris, Foucault, 1820), T. XVI, p. 400.
51
The early modern phenomenon of eleven-month pregnancies is an example of this. L. Wilson,
Women and Medicine in the French Enlightenment. The Debate over the Maladies des Femmes (Baltimore
and London, 1993), pp. 41, 434, 49, 51, 55, 60, 69; C. McClive, Uncertain Fruits: Abortion,
Miscarriage and Unnatural Conceptions. Understanding Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe
(unpublished MA dissertation, Royal Holloway, London 1999), pp. 2832.
218 Cathy McClive
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Moles
Once movement was detected in the womb, not all the uncertainty was banished.
The woman and her practitioner had to make sense of internal motions, which
could so easily be mistaken for colic or wind. A primary concern for Mauriceau
was not to be tricked by the movements felt in the matrix, nor to mistake a
corrupt fermentation for an infant.
52
The incidence of false conceptions exacer-
bated the uncertainties associated with quickening. It was believed that a false
growth began as a corrupt conception, formed from two seeds, male and female. If
not expelled after two or three months it might harden and become a mole. Moles
were masses of unformed esh and blood that were more difcult to remove.
Women could carry them for years, even decades.
53
Ordinary women and medical
practitioners doubted the viability of the fruit long before the moment of birth.
The role of the medical practitioner in determining this viability is clearly
delineated in the literature. Marguerite du Tertre de la Marche, matresse sage-
femme jure at the Htel-Dieu, asked How do you know if a woman is carrying a
mole? in her 1677 Instructions familires et tres utiles aux sages-femmes. The answer, as
with the detection of quickening, lay in an analysis of the movements in the
womb. De la Marche claimed that she could
tell by the weight and immobility of the mole, because a child is light and moves at three
months if it is a boy and at four if it is a girl. A mole has no movement of itself, but follows
the movement of the woman, whatever side she turns to, the mole follows. With a mole,
the womans breasts swell without there being any milk and after the fourth month she feels
no movement in the matrix, which she would if she was carrying a child.
54
Bourgeois also considered internal motions, likening the delicate movement of a
child to the beating wings of a small bird and the motion of a mole to a cat
stretching out in front of a re.
55
Given such poetic descriptions, it is easy to see
how false growths could have furthered existing ambiguities surrounding preg-
nancy, contributing to the stories men and women told about the belly.
The frequency with which false conceptions appeared in early modern medical
literature suggests that knowledge about moles was widespread and was certainly
not restricted to authors of learned medical texts. Male- and female-authored texts
equally displayed a common knowledge and language of moles. Moles and false
growths were also a matter of interest in non-medical circles. The dictionaries of
Richelet and Furetire both included denitions of faux germes and moles in
1680 and 1694 respectively.
56
Equally, Samuel Johnsons dictionary of 1755
contained the terms mole and false conception.
57
The memoirs of the Frisian
52
Mauriceau, Trait, pp. 767.
53
Bourgeois, Observations, p. 54.
54
Marguerite du Tertre de la Marche, Instructions Familires et tres Utiles aux Sages-Femmes (Paris,
1710, 1st edn 1677), p. 30.
55
Bourgeois, Observations, pp. 910.
56
A. Furetire, Dictionnaire Universel (Haye and Rotterdam, 1700, 1st edn 1694), no pagination;
P. Richelet, Dictionnaire Franois (Geneva, 1680), T.I p. 371, T.II p. 45.
57
S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755, facsimile London, 1985), no
pagination.
The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe 219
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midwife, Catharina Schrader (16931740), demonstrated that ordinary people and
lower-prole midwives were familiar with the concept of moles. Schrader noted
two cases involving sugers or vlygers (as she referred to moles).
58
In both cases
Schrader demonstrated her superior knowledge over the empirics and learned
physicians, by disproving the consensus that the woman involved was carrying a
vlyger. More importantly, her memoirs testify to the sharing of technical
concepts and terminology between midwives and doctors.
59
A further complication of the picture is that foetuses and moles could often
develop alongside one another in the matrix. When this happened, the foetus was
in danger of becoming corrupt and monstrous owing to the compression and lack
of nourishment.
60
Interestingly, the medical literature did not indicate how to tell
if a mole and foetus are being carried together by a woman. Did the accompaniment
of a mole hinder the motions of the foetus sufciently for a woman and her midwife
not to perceive its presence? In such cases the truths of the belly often remained
well and truly hidden until they were thrust forth from the body. Mauriceau
described such an incident in March 1674. A woman, believing herself to be two-
and-a-half months pregnant, evacuated in his presence a great quantity of blood, a
eshy, membranous pocket the size of a hens egg, full of water, in the middle of
which I found after having opened it up, a small foetus tinier than a y.
61
It was vital to differentiate between the motions of a true infant and those of a
false conception, not merely to prove or disprove pregnancy but, more import-
antly, in order to procure the evacuation of any moles. Various methods of
expulsion were advocated in the medical literature, ranging from herbal remedies
consisting of dates and white wine, to clysters, purges, injections, and ointments.
62
Failing that, manual expulsion was the last resort. Marguerite du Tertre advocated
waiting until the matrix tried to rid itself of the mole when the internal orice
opened up enough to allow the passage of a hand to pull out the mole in the same
way that the afterbirth would be retrieved.
63
In one sense, moles were representative of what might be termed the everyday
monstrous.
64
The similarities between the way that moles and monstrous births
were perceived extends from comparable theories of conception to the language
used to describe them and to the curious reactions of spectators to their revelation
and display. In the medical literature, the relationship between menstrual uid and
the conception of molesas with monsterswas explicit on various levels.
58
H. Marland (ed.), Mother and Child were Saved: The Memoirs (16931740) of the Frisian Midwife
Catharina Schrader (Amsterdam, 1987), p. 62, case 1671, 25 January 1710 and p. 55, case 525, 30 July
1700.
59
A. Klairmont-Lingo argues, on the contrary, that midwives, ordinary people, and physicians had
different vocabularies to describe the female anatomy. The Fate of Popular Terms for Female
Anatomy in the Age of Print, French Historical Studies, 22 (1999), 33549.
60
Mauriceau, Trait, p. 103.
61
Mauriceau, Observations, p. 89 ob. CVIII, 14 March 1674.
62
L. Bourgeois, Recueil des Secrets (Paris, 1635), p. 134.
63
De la Marche, Instructions, pp. 856.
64
Wonders and monstrous births have formed the subject of many recent historical studies, yet they
have not been linked to moles. For example, L. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature
11501750 (New York, 1998); C. W. Bynum, Wonder, American Historical Review, 102 (1997),
126.
220 Cathy McClive
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Copulation during menstruation was believed to produce moles.
65
Similarly,
moles could develop if the conception was drowned by a quantity of dirty and
corrupt menstrual blood.
66
The language of monstrosity was often used to describe moles and faux germes
in medical texts. For instance, de la Marche wrote of faux germes monstrueux in a
discussion of unnatural conceptions.
67
On 27 July 1574, Ambroise Par conducted
an autopsy on the wife of Guillaume Roger, aged 50, who had carried a mole for
seventeen years. The dissection was performed in front of Guillemeau and other
surgeons. Par successfully removed the mole, which had tumeed and weighed
over nine pounds. He recorded, I keep it in my cabinet, as a monstrous thing.
68
His turn of phrase highlights both the medical curiosity associated with the
witnessing of moles and their proximity to monstrosity.
There is also a marked linguistic difference in the medical literature when
referring to the delivery of false conceptions and moles rather than true fruits.
Instead of the terms like delivery or abortion used in connection with foetuses, the
texts speak of discharging, expelling, evacuating, and emptying false concep-
tions, suggesting the distasteful nature of the matter.
69
Given the strong historical correlation between moles and the monstrous, it is
surprising that there is so little hint of monstrosity in the records of women
accused of infanticide and abortion. The uncertainties of pregnancy meant that
most women and their midwives had experience of strange things coming out of
their bodies. The familiarity with the concept of moles demonstrated in the
infanticide records studied by Jackson and Gowing suggests that their incidence
was commonplace. Knowledge of moles was therefore almost banaleven if their
occurrence was more uncertain. It would consequently be wrong to assume that,
because the false conceptions described in the assize records were narrative
constructions rather than real physical products, early modern women did not
suffer from moles. There are several important points to be made here. The rst is
that, in one sense, whether or not these accused women actually produced moles is
irrelevant. The prevalence of the uncertainties and ambiguities surrounding
perceptions of pregnancy in itself contributed to the production of such tales. The
second point is that we cannot entirely rule out the possibility of the physical
presence of moles in such cases. How can the historian explain this apparent
discrepancy between the widespread awareness of moles and their non-appearance
in court records? Perhaps this could be achieved by examining the tension in the
secondary literature between the knowledge of secrets attributed to ordinary
65
Guillemeau, De la Grossesse, pp. 212; J. Sharp, The Midwives Book or the Whole Art of Midwifery
Discovered (London, 1671), p. 107; Mauriceau, Trait, p. 74. See, also, O. Nicoli, Menstruum quasi
Monstruum, Quaderni Storici, 44 (1980), 40228, reprinted in E. Muir and G. Ruggiero (eds), Sex and
Gender in Historical Perspective (Baltimore and London, 1990), 125, pp. 1113; P. Soergel, The
Afterlives of Monstrous Infants in Reformation Germany, in P. Marshall and B. Gordon (eds), The
Place of the Dead (Cambridge, 2000), 289309.
66
Mauriceau, Trait, p. 101.
67
De la Marche, Instructions, p. 29.
68
Par, Oeuvres, p. 573.
69
Mauriceau, Trait, pp. 79, 352; Bourgeois, Observations, p. 134; Sharp, The Midwives Book,
pp. 18890.
The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe 221
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women, the restrictions on what sorts of secrets could be revealed by women, and
in what contexts this was appropriate.
70
Court records do not make explicit refer-
ences to moles or monsters, but rather to the more ambiguous false conceptions.
Testimonies of passing shapeless lumps appear to have been as close to an admission
of monstrosity as was appropriate. Indeed, the ambiguity of the description perhaps
reected the uncertainty of the situation as it also reected the unformed bloody
and eshy mass. Therefore, it is possible that married and single women suffered
from moles or monstrous births that were not explicitly documented as such.
An example from the work of Flemish surgeon, Jean Palfyn, writing in French at
the turn of the eighteenth century, may help to clarify this point. In 1695, a young
Parisian girl suspected of having illicit relations with her lover was horried by the
reaction of the community to her swelling belly. The girls menses continued to
ow and her belly to swell over the next seven years, yet no baby appeared. After
many unsuccessful remedies her practitioners decided to open up her abdomen.
On the third cut the surgeon was reportedly astonished to see hair, bones and tiny
organs . . . and a row of teeth from the infants upper jaw. Shortly afterwards the
girl died and her family refused to permit a full autopsy. Retrospectively, Palfyn
explained this anomalous discovery by arguing that the foetus following the
intentions of the mother, by means which are still unknown, stayed inseparably
attached to the matrix to hide the pregnancy and protect the girls honour. He did
not hint that the set of teeth could in any way be interpreted as monstrous; rather,
he diagnosed simultaneous pregnancy, dropsy, and a collaboration between the
matrix and the child to conceal the internal corporeal truths.
71
The suggestion
was that, by sheer force of imagination and fear, the girl forced her body to conceal
the truth, although the dissector ultimately discovered the truth. Another case, this
time from England in 1672, is also useful. Sarah Poole, accused of infanticide,
claimed in her deposition to have miscarried a mention of a child not formed as it
should be. She showed this lump to her lover, who immediately proposed. Sarah
was acquitted.
72
It is unclear from the surviving documentation if this was because
the promise of marriage resolved the religious, moral, and economic problems
associated with pre-marital sexual activity. However, this case is an excellent
example of the linguistic plasticity created by the ambiguities surrounding
pregnancy, encapsulated in the word mention. The term mention, which itself
hints at an aspect of unnaturalnessbe it abnormality or incomplete formation
in the conception, thus removed all culpability for the miscarriage.
70
W. Eaman, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
(Princeton, 1994). See the debate in Gender History between M. Chaytor and G. Walker regarding
female narratives, language, and knowledge: Chaytor, Husband(ry): Narratives of Rape in the
Seventeenth Century, Gender History, 7 (1995), 378407; Walker, Rereading Rape and Sexual
Violence in Early Modern England, Gender History, 10 (1998), 125, especially pp. 57, and the
article by M. Green, From Diseases of Women to Secrets of Women: The Transformation of
Gynaecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 30
(2000), 539.
71
J. Palfyn, Description Anatomique des Parties de la Femme qui servent a la Generation, avec un Trait des
Monstres (Leydon, 1708), pp. 7780.
72
PRO, ASSI 45/10/ m. 114, 10 October 1672. Gowing mentions this case, but in a different
context. See Secret Births, p. 55.
222 Cathy McClive
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In other cases, false conceptions could substantiate the claims of women to
knowledge of their bodies secrets. Some women used their previous experi-
ence to assert their epistemological advantage over the physician and insist on their
version of their bodily truth. Guillemeau recounted the experience of Made-
moiselle Braguelongre who visited him during her second pregnancy convinced
that she was carrying a faux germe. She claimed to recognize the hardness and pain
on her left side as being like one that she had felt during an earlier pregnancy
that had entailed a false growth. To begin with, Guillemeau was hesitant, but
he recorded that the woman was correct and that she did indeed expel a faux germe
the size of a st.
73
Mlle Braguelongres condent interpretation of her bodys
hidden truths was thus validated through the surgeons analysis of the expelled
matter.
Miscarriages
Just as moles could be good news for women suffering from sterility, so women
who thought they were pregnant and miscarried after an injury were intensely
relieved to discover that they had been carrying a false fruit.
74
Mauriceau noted
several such examples. On 23 August 1677, a woman believing herself to be three
months pregnant visited Mauriceau. She had fallen on her kidneys and had mis-
carried. Mauriceau consoled her with the knowledge that she had not been truly
pregnant, but had been carrying a faux germe. The woman reportedly was joyous
to be thus happily delivered of this strange body.
75
Similarly, on 13 November
1681 a woman visited Mauriceau having suffered a severe fright and consequently
stomach pains and blood loss. Once again she had thought she was pregnant, but
Mauriceau revealed to her that she had in fact been carrying a faux germe.
76
Obviously Mauriceau was testifying to his prowess as a midwife. However, this
does not detract from the documented relief experienced by these women who
had been tricked by their bodies and were thus happily excused from any guilt or
blame for the miscarriage.
The expulsion of a false conception was a welcome event but many women
were faced with the opposite problem of avoiding accidents, which could cause
them to miscarry their true fruit. The difculty of distinguishing between a
spontaneous and an induced abortion, for both the woman and her medical
practitioner, is reected in the ambiguous language used in such cases. In a sense,
then, both the body and the nature of the language conceal the truth. Again this
linguistic plasticity can be interpreted as a reection of the uncertainty of percep-
tions and understandings of pregnancy. In French, the generic term avortement
appears to have been used to denote miscarriage and induced abortion, although
fausse couche was employed in some cases when miscarriage was the most probable
73
Guillemeau, De la grossesse, pp. 5989.
74
A faux germe was ordinarily a fortuitous sign of future fecundity. See Mauriceau, Aphorismes,
p. 38, no. 67. One woman, who had been barren for 15 years, generated two false conceptions and
then nally a healthy infant. Idem, Observations, p. 163, ob. CCIV.
75
Ibid., p. 242, ob. CCXCIII.
76
Ibid.
The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe 223
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denition.
77
Mauriceau detailed the history of one woman, aged 25, using
avortement and fausse couche interchangeably to refer to what seem to have been
miscarriages.
78
Similarly, midwife Jane Sharp noted in 1671 an abundance of
causes whereby women are driven to abort or miscarry, bringing forth an untimely
birth or fruit before it be ripe.
79
Terms that we would see as being different could
actually mean the same thing. A case in point was investigated by Par and was
included in his Trait des Rapports of 1575. The victim, Marguerite, had been
wounded in the belly and her uterus had been penetrated. As a result she was
delivered before term (of) a male infant, dead, well-formed in all its limbs, which
infant had also received a wound in its head, penetrating into the substance of the
brain.
80
Par used the verb avorter to indicate the level of violence and the stage of
foetal development, although he referred to an incident we would probably call a
miscarriage. It is not clear if the unnamed assailant knew of Marguerites condition,
or whether he/she was indeed collaborating in an attempt to induce abortion.
However, the infant, well-formed in all its limbs, was perceived by Par to have
quickened and thus to be animated. The crime therefore merited the death penalty
and was equivalent to the travesty of 1666 recorded by Mauriceau. Interestingly,
the term abortion was used in only two surviving Home Circuit indictment
records c. 15601700. In both cases an extreme level of violence was recorded.
81
No verdicts of miscarriage were documented on the Home Circuit, although
verdicts of death by divine visitation were returned.
82
Some women seemed prone to miscarry. Mauriceau noted the susceptibility of
some women who are so delicate that the scent of a badly-extinguished candle is
capable of causing them to deliver before term.
83
Mary Evelyn suffered from three
such accidents in 1651, 1660, and 1666. The rst was caused by a dose of physic
taken in good faith when she was unaware of being with child; the second was a
fall from a stoole; and the third, apparently without an attributable cause, occurred
in the night.
84
There was a consensus amongst contemporary authors of medical texts about
the common causes of miscarriage. Bourgeois cited anger as the most frequent
reason for miscarriages
85
and Sharp noted that a great provocation to stool was
often the cause.
86
This latter explanation is extremely important, given that many
women suspected of infanticide presented the defence that they had been surprised
77
Furetire, Dictionnaire Universel, no pagination.
78
Mauriceau, Observations, p. 21, ob. 24, 3 August 1670.
79
Sharp, The Midwives Book, p. 221.
80
Par, Oeuvres, L.28, pp. 1, 197.
81
PRO, ASSI 35/31/3 m. 45, Richard Poope, yeoman of Bobbing, 27 February 1589, Cockburn,
Calendar Kent Elizabeth I case 1741; PRO, ASSI 35/122/8 m. 160, Henry Holden of Greenwich, 28
July 1681, Cockburn, Calendar Kent Charles II, case 727.
82
PRO, ASSI 35/50/8 m. 1, 20 December 1608, Cockburn, Calendar Surrey James I, case 203 and
PRO, ASSI 35/111/3 m. 23, 17 June 1670, idem, Calendar Kent Charles II, case 1235.
83
Mauriceau, Trait, p. 106; Sharp reiterates this sentiment, The Midwives Book, pp. 2214.
84
De Beer, Diary of John Evelyn, 2 May 1651, p. 200; 18 October 1660, p. 412; 13 April 1666,
p. 487.
85
Bourgeois, Observations, pp. 256.
86
Sharp, The Midwives Book, pp. 2223.
224 Cathy McClive
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by the birth whilst in the privy.
87
Mauriceau, Bourgeois, and Sharp also cited
excessive bleeding, thunder, bad falls, warm baths, lifting heavy things, and styling
ones own hair as reasonable causes of spontaneous miscarriage.
88
Women them-
selves expressed similar concerns. In a letter to her daughter dated 7 June 1600,
Louise de Coligny wrote of the illness of the Kings mistress, Mademoiselle
dEstraigues, which was such that we feared that she would go into labour. Fright
caused by extremely loud thunder a few nights ago brought about her bad turn.
89
Long or difcult journeys were also to be avoided, particularly in the late months
of pregnancy. Madame de Caylus records in her memoirs that, following the death
of the Queen and the retiring of Louis XIV to Saint Cloud as a mark of respect, the
Dauphine was exhorted to remain at Versailles rather than undergo the voyage.
Madame de Maintenon was given the task of persuading the Dauphine to stay in
bed since she was pregnant and had just been bled, because the King does not need
such demonstrations of friendship, but the State needs a prince.
90
Excessive
dancing was also frowned upon when with child. The Comtesse de la Rivire
wrote in a letter on 23 March 1687 that she had refused to dance the contre-danse
because of her pregnancy.
91
Accidents did happen. However, it was expected that
women should be aware of the uncertainties of pregnancy and the dangers posed
by certain activities so that they could take care to avoid risks. Mauriceau was not
always forgiving if a patient ignored his advice. One woman miscarried at four
months because she had persisted in taking a rough coach ride from Paris to
Versailles and was therefore in his eyes guilty of the homicide of her own child.
92
If some misfortune did befall a woman with child, she had recourse to various
remedies to prevent her from miscarrying. Bourgeois warned of harmful coughs
and provided receipts for use during pregnancy in order to carry the child full-
term.
93
The carrying of amulets was also advised, along with restorative recipes,
usually containing yellow egg yolk, for use after a fall or mischance.
94
The
plenitude of recipes to prevent miscarriage/abortion, in both male- and female-
authored midwifery texts and in learned and more popular works, is a clear
indication of the wide dissemination of fears concerning the uncertainty of
pregnancy and the threat of losing the foetus. Surprisingly, much of the secondary
literature has concentrated on recipes to provoke abortions, neglecting those
designed to safeguard pregnancy.
95
87
Even today some women claim to be surprised to nd themselves pregnant by the onset in the
bathroom of labour, which they had mistaken for constipation.
88
Mauriceau, Observations, p. 516 ob. 628, 9 August 1691.
89
Correspondance de Louise de Coligny, pp. 1689.
90
Les Souvenirs de Madame Caylus, Edition Prsente par B. Noel (Paris, 1965), p. 86.
91
Lettres de la Comtesse de la Rivire Madame la Baronne de Neufpoint, son Amie: Contenant les
Principaux Evnements de sa Vie (Paris, 1776), p. 221, lettre, 332, 28 March 1687.
92
Mauriceau, Observations, p. 516, ob. 628, 9 August 1691.
93
Bourgeois, Receuil, pp. 1227.
94
Digby le Chevalier, Receuil des Remedes et Secrets tirez des Memoires de Mr. Le Chevalier Digby de la
Reyne dAngleterre, avec Plusieurs Autres Secrets et Parfums, tous Experimentez (Paris, 1669), p. 77.
95
See, for example, the work of J. Riddle, Eves Herbs (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1997).
The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe 225
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Conclusion
The Parisian scandal of 1666 led Mauriceau to ruminate on the uncertainties of
pregnancy and, in particular, on the role of the medical expert. He warned
strongly of the dangers of ignorance and temerity: If there is a time when
surgeons or physicians must be more prudent and reect more on their prognosis
. . . it is with relation to their judgement concerning conception and pregnancy in
women, to avoid serious accidents.
96
This sentiment was echoed by the author of
the 1703 factum who remarked that all these marks and symptoms of pregnancy
are still very uncertain proofs. There is nothing more incomprehensible than the
manner in which the conception of man occurs, nothing more ckle than the signs
or the appearances of pregnancy in a woman.
97
The uncertainty of pregnancy was often such that only when the fruit indi-
cated its live presence and could be declared quick was the truth of the belly
revealed. However, the detection of motion in the matrix was not always a
guarantee of true pregnancy, and the sensations of quickening had to be carefully
examined to discover whether the contents of the belly were indeed a fully-
formed foetus rather than a false growth. If a mole was discovered, the woman had
to try to procure its expulsion. If the pregnancy was a true one, the woman was
faced with the threat of miscarriage and had to try to avoid strong emotions and
accidents. On other occasions, the rst indication of pregnancy occurred when the
fruit (true or false) was expelled outside the womb. The uncertainties associ-
ated with quickening, the conception of moles, and the threat of miscarriage were
just some of the ambiguities faced by learned medical practitioners, midwives, and
ordinary women. At any moment, one or all three could be deceived by the bodys
story. Further difculties surrounded the issues of conception itself, the length of
gestation, and the carrying and expulsion of dead fruit.
The early modern experience of pregnancy was anything but the simple
progression from conception to delivery anticipated today. The linguistic as well as
medical framework of the twenty-rst century must be avoided. Not only did the
body conceal its truths, but also the language used to voice the physical condition
was itself unsure. Moreover, the boundaries between experience and expertise
were not so clearly delineated as today.
Rather, there were varying levels of expertise, depending on the context. The
complexity of the patient-practitioner relationship was revealed in the uncertain-
ties of pregnancy, challenging the power ascribed to the patient as consumer in
much recent literature. The expert was simultaneously needful and mistrustful of
the womans wordneither wholly dismissive nor acquiescent. The early modern
woman glimpsed in these sources often faltered in her narrative and sought advice
and help as well as conrmation of her own prognosis. Lacking control of her
narrative and her body, she could often be uncertain about what was happening to
her. Experience brought a form of expertise, but each pregnancy was different and
each woman experienced pregnancy differently.
96
Mauriceau, Trait, p. 65.
97
A Nosseigneurs, p. 13.
226 Cathy McClive
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The importance of the female narrative is demonstrated in the emphasis on case
notes and observations found in the medical texts. Here, experience and expertise
contributed to a common interpretation of the uncertainties of pregnancy. Often
there were epistemological conicts and contradictions but these were a reection
of the ambiguity of the matter rather than a dilution of the shared nature of such
knowledge. Historians have perhaps overestimated the extent to which a
womans word was disbelieved. Instead, we should concentrate on the issue of the
ambiguity of the physical narrative of the body which is, after all, the source of
such uncertain stories. It is only through further examination of the uncertainties
of early modern pregnancy that the hidden truths of the historical pregnant belly
may become clearer.
Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful to Sandra Cavallo, Estelle Cohen, Louise Gray, Colin
Jones, Hilary Marland, Penny Roberts, Lyndal Roper, Lisa Smith, and Chloe
Underwood for reading various drafts. I would also like to thank the editors and
the anonymous referees for their comments. Research for this paper was carried
out as part of an MA in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe at Royal Holloway
College and was funded by the AHRB.
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