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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Back when we were first starting women's studies (and it was possible to read nearly everything out there) it was fairly common knowledge that high rates of death in childbirth were a nineteenth century phenomenon. Puerperal fever was an infection caused by medicalization. Especially in hospitals, doctors carried infection on their hands from one patient to another and even in home births frequently infected women who would otherwise have survived. Somewhere in the seventies, Vern Bullough and a collaborator published an article in Speculum regarding the iron content in the typical woman's diet, concluding that the loss of iron caused by childbirth would probably catch up with them around the third birth. Even so, there is no reason to think that childbirth caused any significant sexual imbalance. As I said before, twelfth century writers complained a lot about the surplus of women. They blamed a noticeable rise in prostitution on negligent secular men, urging them to marry repentant women. I address this question in an article called "The Herrenfrage" in Medieval Masculinities (ed. Clare Lees). There was a multiplication of women's communities at the time but it never came close to matching the numbers of men's houses. Jo Ann McNamara ----- Original Message ----- From: "Nancy McKenna" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 8:36 PM Subject: Re: [M-R] saints > medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture > > > I am not happy with the idea that dying-in-childbirth tidied up the > > ratios. > > The documents I have worked with -- generally Venice 1300-1550, including > > a > > necrology for the Greek community for 250 years, suggest that this is much > > lower in the list of causes of female mortality than dysenteries, > > pneumonia > > & "fever" (probably often malaria). I'd like to know about studies on > > this > > topic. > > I agree. necrology lists for the colonial period also shows that less than > 5% of deaths of women could be considered possibly from childbirth. If I > recall, this was a correlation of deaths of the mother within a year of a > child's birth, so even that number could easily be considered high. If I can > recall the name of the study, I'll list it. > > Nancy > > ********************************************************************** > To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME > to: [log in to unmask] > To send a message to the list, address it to: > [log in to unmask] > To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion > to: [log in to unmask] > In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: > [log in to unmask] > For further information, visit our web site: > http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html > ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html