This book studies Caesarean birth from an interdisciplinary perspective: I look at the social and cultural context of the operation, its medical reality, its pictorial sources, and legends and miracle stories involving Caesareans. One of the focal points is the question of who was allowed to do Caesareans: midwives or male surgeons? The Caesarean is revealed as a touchstone for understanding male/female competition in the medical profession and for the role "unnatural" birth played in the medieval and Renaissance imagination.

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