TOPICS: Phantom pregnancy Grossesse imaginaire
- Some critical studiesQuelques études critiques:
- Bates, A., Emblematic Monsters: unnatural conceptions and deformed births in Early Modern Europe, Amsterdam, 2005.
- Berriot-Salvadore, E., Un Corps, un destin. La femme dans la médecine de la Renaissance, Paris, 1993.
- Darmon, P., Le Mythe de la procréation à l'âge baroque, Paris, 1981.
- Daston, L., and Park, K., Wonders and the Orders of Nature 1515-1750, New York, 1998.
- Gélis, J., L'Arbre et le fruit. La naissance dans l'occident moderne XVI e -XIX e siècle , Paris, 1984.
- King, H., Hippocrates' Woman. Reading the female body in Ancient Greece, London, 1998.
- Laurent, S., Naître au Moyen Age. De la conception à la naissance : la grossesse et l'accouchement, Paris, 1989.
- Pinto-Correia, E., , The Ovary of Eve. Egg and sperm and preformation, Chicago and London, 1997.
- Tucker, H., Pregnant Fictions : Childbirth and the Fairytale in Early Modern France, Detroit, 2003.
- Worth-Stylianou, V., Les Traités d'obstétrique en langue française au seuil de la modernité, Geneva, 2007.
- Jacques Bury
- The Experiences of a Surgeon Skilled in Difficult Deliveries (1623)
Les expériences d’un chirurgien specialisé dans les accouchements difficiles (1623)
- Théophile Gelée
- A Doctor from Dieppe Relates an Aborted Birth and Successful Caesarean Operation (1622)Un médecin dieppois raconte une naissance avortée et une opération césarienne (1622)
- Ambroise Paré
- The Royal Surgeon, Paré, outlines human conception (1573)Ambroise Pare, Premier Chirurgien du Roi, explique la génération de l’homme (1573)
- Simon de Provanchières
- A provincial doctor relates an aborted and monstrously delayed birth (1582)Un médecin provincial raconte une naissance avortée et monstrueusement retardée (1582)
- Louis de Serres
- Sterility and Phantom Pregnancies (1625)Stérilité et faux accouchements (1625)
How did the Early Modern period establish if a woman was pregnant? And how could a true pregnancy be distinguished from a phantom one? Physicians and doctors were all too aware that many signs of early pregnancy – faintness, palpitations, sickness, the absence of menstruation - were simply the result of a woman's excessively cold and damp humours, and might thus disguise other female maladies. A woman desperate to find herself pregnant might thus falsely believe she were. Mary Tudor, Queen of England, is a sad example, but Louis de Serres tells a humorous story of a sterile woman. who gave birth to a puff of air!