Tales of births - normal, abnormal, monstrous, fantastic – have always fascinated. Birth is the one experience all readers have shared, yet cannot remember for themselves; know only vicariously, through other people's accounts of what happened. Birth is also the moment of entry to the world, yet not the first moment of existence. It is when – before the days of ultrasound scans or X-rays – others could finally set eyes upon what had existed, had lived, for many months before, in the mysterious, sealed world of the womb.

Little wonder that writings of all ages abound with birthing tales, and none more so than in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, following the advent of print. Alongside poetry, prose fiction, (surprisingly rare) autobiographical reports, there are also medical works which devote a generous space to such tales. Of all the countries in Early Modern Europe, France saw a particularly significant number of obstetric treatises published in the vernacular, which were thus accessible to an audience beyond the physicians who would consult long Latin tomes compiled primarily from ancient sources. In my recent study, Les Traités d'obstétrique, published with Droz, I provide a full critical bibliography and study of some twenty obstetric medical works written in or translated into French, all of which first appeared between 1536-1627 (see Google books link). The authors include famous surgeons, such as Ambroise Paré, the royal midwife, Louise Bourgeois, and the controversial Chancellor of the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier, Laurent Joubert.

My aim here is rather different. This website offers non-specialists as well as Renaissance scholars a glimpse of the sheer variety and verve with which birthing tales are related in works which purport, at least, to be serious medical treatises. (For a comparison with birthing tales in works of fiction, see my article ‘Telling Tales of death in Childbirth’.)