Childbirth is among the oldest and most fundamental of health care
procedures. As medicine took on recognizably modern characteristics,
traditions regarding delivery and childcare were written and transmitted through printed books. The first to be written in a vernacular language, which could be read by a wider population, was a German book commonly referred to as “The Rosegarden,” published in 1513. It went through many editions and was widely copied. La Commare Oriccoglitrice is an Italian manual for midwives by Girolamo Mercurio, the first to appear in the Italian language. The second edition, seen here, was revised by Mercurio and contains three books in one. The first focuses on pregnancy and health care for the woman and newborn child, the second deals with abnormal presentations, while the third covers a variety of complications that can affect the mother and newborn. Together, these books form a unified whole for the benefit of a midwife caring for a woman entering labor.

The woodcut illustrations present a selection of fetal positions in the womb that are mostly copied from the illustrations created for The Rosegarden. La Commare is notable, however, for its illustrations of birthing positions, and for including one of the earliest depictions of a Caesarean delivery. Mercurio was a proponent of Caesarean sections at a time when they were uncommon, unusual, and generally fatal to the
patient. It wasn’t until several years after the publication of La Commare that there was a documented case of a successful Caesarean section. When he wrote his book, Mercurio was a lone voice for this
procedure, facing opposition from the Church and contemporaries such as Ambrose Pare.

The Ebling Library Copy (WZ 250 M557C 1601-06)

Our copy of La Commare is similar to many of the other books in our collection. It has been rebound and the title page shows evidence of some repairs to the edges of the paper. There are some wormholes through the first several leaves, a repair on the first leaf of text, and damp staining
throughout. The title page has a handwritten “ex libris” notation that has been crossed out, and there is a handwritten note on the recto of the last leaf of the introduction. Provenance information has otherwise not been retained. Overall, the physical condition of the binding and sheets, along with the presence of some annotation, is representative of the working nature of the Ebling Library’s rare book collection.

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