This thesis examines the eighteenth-century medicalization of childbirth in Britain as a gendered transformation of authority that displaced traditional female midwifery with maledominated obstetrics. It argues that this shift was not simply the result of technological advancement or improved medicine but rather was a result of a broader cultural and epistemological reconfiguration. Drawing on midwifery treatises by practitioners such as Jane Sharpe and Sarah Stone, alongside works by William Smellie, William Hunter, and others, this study traces how childbirth moved from a communal, experience-based practice to a medicalized discipline grounded in anatomical knowledge, print culture, and institutional authority. Using Michel Foucault’s concept of the medical gaze, it highlights how visual and textual forms of knowledge marginalized embodied female expertise. This argument also foregrounds resistance by female midwives, particularly Elizabeth Nihell, who defended experiential knowledge and critiqued instrumental intervention, demonstrating that this transformation was contested and deeply embedded in power relations.
Simar Sandhu (Thu,) studied this question.