Provincial Obstetrics in late eighteenth-century England: Thomas Higgins of Wem, 1759-1803

这项研究将构成一个主要的案例研究到一个省级男子助产士，一个新的类别的医生，出现在十八世纪后半叶。托马斯希金斯，一个男人助产士和外科医生药剂师的韦姆在什罗普郡（1759年至1803年），进行产科工作，从1781年直到他去世。他留下了一份珍贵的档案，其中包含了一系列不同寻常的手稿材料，包括助产病例簿、一本药品销售书、家庭账目、家庭法律的文件和信件。幸运的是，这本书得到了一套丰富的手稿的支持，这些手稿与韦姆教区有关，包括对土地所有者/占用者的调查、文法学校受托人的记录和一系列遗嘱。因此，本项目将通过研究医生的个人和医疗接触来探讨医生的职业和社会平等问题。这项工作是重要的，因为省级男子助产士的研究已大大掩盖了伦敦男子的工作，尽管前者的意义和更多的数字。此外，助产士案例簿的证据可以与教区登记册中发现的当地洗礼、婴儿埋葬和妇女埋葬联系起来。这些综合数据可用于解决当地人口有关出生登记不足、婴儿死亡率和孕产妇死亡率的问题。这种调查是非常不寻常的，因为人口统计历史通常只依赖于教区登记。

This research will constitute a major case study into a provincial man midwife, a new category of medical practitioner that emerged over the second half of the eighteenth century. Thomas Higgins, a man midwife and surgeon apothecary of Wem in Shropshire (1759-1803), undertook obstetrical work from 1781 until his death. He left a valuable archive containing an unusual combination of manuscript materials including midwifery casebooks, a drugs sales book, household accounts family legal papers, and correspondence. Fortunately this collection is supported by a rich set of manuscripts relating to the parish of Wem including a survey of landowners/occupiers, the records of grammar-school trustees and a series of Wills. Therefore this project will examine the question of a practitioner's professional and social equals by making a study of his personal and medical contacts. This work is important because research on provincial man midwives has been substantially overshadowed by work on London men, despite the significance and greater numbers of the former. Furthermore the evidence of the midwifery casebooks can be linked to local baptisms, infant burials and women's burials found in parish registers. The combination of data can be used to address questions about the local population concerning the under-registration of births, infant mortality, and maternal mortality. This sort of investigation is very unusual, since demographic history usually relies on parish registers alone.