HPS Seminar: Dr Paige Donaghy on the History of the Placenta
Schedule
Wed, 31 Jul, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Location
University of Melbourne, Old Arts Room 103 | Melbourne, VI
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"After Birth: A History of the Placenta in European Medicine, 1550-1750"Paige Donaghy (University of Melbourne)
In 2014, reproductive biologists at the American National Institute of Human Development launched the “Human Placenta Project”, a research centre dedicated to studying the human placenta’s structure and function. Scientists involved in the project argued that such a research effort was necessary because the “placenta is the least understood human organ”, despite its important role in reproduction. While these researchers lamented that knowledge about the placenta was at present, “woeful”, their assessment of contemporary scientific research also extends to our historical knowledge of the human placenta. There is a dearth of research into the history of scientific, medical, or cultural ideas about the placenta in any time period, despite this organ’s cultural and scientific significance.
My research seeks to build our historical knowledge of the placenta, and afterbirth more broadly, focussing on the early modern European lay and medical knowledges about this important organ. Known in this period as the “afterbirth”, “secundine”, “placenta”, and “liver of the uterus”, this organ was understood by early modern people to play a key role in generation, as well as forming an important part of the processes of childbirth. In this paper, I explore relationships between lay and learned knowledges of this period, such as midwifery and anatomy, to provide a picture of cultural knowledge and practices related to the afterbirth. I show how textual and visual knowledge about the placenta was produced and shared by anatomists, medical practitioners, and women midwives.
Dr Paige Donaghy is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne, Australia where she is researching obstetric medicine, gender and emotions in early modern Europe. She is an award-winning historian who has published widely on sexuality, gender and reproductive medicine in the Social History of Medicine and Isis.
https://www.hpsunimelb.org/seminars
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Where is it happening?
University of Melbourne, Old Arts Room 103, Old Arts, Grattan St, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia,Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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