Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VIII. Forerunners and Contemporaries
324 GERMANY Every influence at work had a tendency to magnify the office of midwife and degrade the medical profession. The Duke of Saxony’s ordinances for midwives, published in 1682, were just a little in advance of the Rules of the Central Midwives Board in England prepared in 1903. Even such an appointment, as that of Justine Siegmund to be midwife to the Court of Brandenburg, raised the position of the midwife and lowered by comparison that of the surgeon, who was still excluded from the ordinary practice of midwifery. “ Die Sieg- mundin ” wrote a manual of midwifery, which was probably useful, and she was imitated in this respect on a great scale by midwives and surgeons alike, but everything obstetric remained, as v. Siebold said, in a state of “notorious inferiority” for another century. The first Obstetric Clinic for students of medicine in Germany was started at Göttingen in 1751 by Roederer, a pupil and disciple of Smellie, for whom he shewed his admiration by translating and publishing his book without acknowledgement. In the same year a sort of school for midwives was founded at the Berlin Charité. The pupils then received formal if not systematic instruction from the doctors, and had to pass an examination of a kind. It was not till about 1780 that a course of midwifery for surgeons was commenced in Berlin, and no Clinic for students of medicine existed there until 1817. Midwives still held the upper hand. Since the beginning of the 19th century a revolution has occurred with regard to the teaching of midwifery in Germany. All the universities now have lying-in hospitals, and the clinical teaching for several decades has been admirable. With regard to the training of midwives great improvements have been introduced. Suitable pupils are in a certain measure selected. They have to pass a real examination, and in their practice they are each of them assigned to a district and are under a modified medical supervision and control. There are excellent manuals of midwifery for midwives available in
