A woman giving birth aided by a surgeon who fumbles beneath a sheet to save the lady from embarassment. Wood engraving after a woodcut, 1711.

1 print : wood engraving ; image 10.1 x 6.4 cm,

The height of prudery - a physician operating under the sheet. ... Lettering continues: "For thirteen centuries the physicians of Europe were not allowed to attend normal cases of delivery, but in the seventeenth century they began to participate to some extent. Except among royalty they met with amazing prudery and were often forced to carry out their manipulations blindly, as shown here, in order to spare the blushes of their modest patients. A woodcut from the works of a Dutch physician, Samuel Janson, 1681."

On the same mount are: a wood engraving after H. Daumier about a midwife and a frontispiece to 'The English midwife ...'

Wellcome Collection 16944i

The original is a plate to: S. Janson, Korte en bondige verhandeling, van de voortteeling en 't kinderbaren, Amsterdam 1711, plate VI, p. 106