Hints to Husbands: A Revelation of the Man-Midwife's Mysteries

Morant, GeorgeProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5
Word count
210K words
Chapters
21

Tags

English Originals Gender RelationsMedicine Historical ReappraisalSocial ObservationPopular Narrative19th CenturyFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Hints to Husbands: A Revelation of the Man-Midwife's Mysteries by George MorantAuthor: Morant, George,Language: English, Class: RG: Medicine: Gynecology and obstetrics, Release Date: Nov 25, 2010

Editor's review

This 19th-century British volume by physician George Morant is a work of obstetrics and domestic medicine written under the guise of "hints to husbands." The term "man-midwife" in the title refers to the male midwives who were gradually displacing female birth attendants at the time, a term carrying significance for both medical and social history. It is not a childcare guide in the modern sense, but rather an account of childbirth, postpartum care, and marital duty framed within an older medical discourse, where premodern obstetric knowledge, gender division of labor, and family ethics intertwine. For today's readers its value lies less in practical instruction than in its historical and textual interest: it shows how the professionalization of medicine entered domestic life, and conveys the admonitory tone of Victorian writing. Best read with a historical eye, as a primary source for the social history of medicine rather than a manual to follow wholesale.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the preface and table of contents to grasp the author's intended audience and purpose before turning to the main text.
  2. Note old-fashioned medical terms as you go, cross-referencing annotations or medical history sources.
  3. Treat it as a historical source rather than a guide, paying attention to how gender roles and doctor-patient relations are described.
  4. Read it alongside other 19th-century obstetric or domestic medicine texts to observe what changes and what persists in the discourse.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21

FAQ

Can this book be used as a modern pregnancy guide? Not advisable. Its content dates from the 19th century, and its medical concepts, practical advice, and sanitary conditions are all outdated; some claims even contradict modern medicine. It is better suited as reading material for the history of medicine and gender history—to understand how people of the time conceived of childbirth and marital duty—rather than as a basis for arranging today's pregnancy and postpartum care.
What does "man-midwife" in the title mean? "Man-midwife" is a historical term for a male midwife—a medically trained male practitioner who attended births. The term reflects how male physicians gradually entered a field formerly dominated by female midwives in modern obstetrics, and is one of the key terms for understanding the book's historical context.
What level of English is needed to read this book? The original is 19th-century English, with long sentences, archaic vocabulary, and period medical terminology. Strong English reading ability will make it smoother, and reading slowly with a dictionary or bilingual resources helps. If you only want the gist, start with introductory material and then read selected chapters in detail.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Morant, George Author

George Morant is the author credited with Hints to Husbands: A Revelation of the Man-Midwife's Mysteries. Public information about his life is limited: his nationality, dates of birth and death, and educational background are not reliably recorded, and only one work by him is held in the collection. From the surviving information, the book centres on the man-midwife, a profession that was controversial in its day, and takes the form of advice addressed to husbands, revealing the inner workings and practical details of the midwifery trade. The words "hints" and "revelation" in the title suggest a tone of warning and exposure, direct in manner and aimed at ordinary family readers rather than medical professionals. Books of this kind were not uncommon among nineteenth-century English-language writings on childbirth and domestic health, often combining practical guidance with social commentary, and the present work may be seen as part of that tradition.