A Mothers Manual for the Women of Ferrara A FifteenthCentury Guide to Pregnancy and Pediatrics

The first treatise of its kind to be written in a European vernacular. Around 1460, Michele Savonarola produced the extraordinary Mothers Manual for the Women of Ferrara, a gynecological, obstetrical, and pediatric treatise composed in the vernacular so that it could be read not only by the learned but also by pregnant and nursing mothers and the midwives and wet nurses who presided over childbirth. Savonarolas work is not merely a trivial set of instructions, but the work of a learned scholar who drew on, among others, the ancient Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen, and Avicennas Canon of Medicine. The first of its kind, Savonarolas Mothers Manual helps readers understand both the development of late-medieval and early-modern obstetrics and gynecology, as well as the experiences of women who turn to advice books for help with reproductive issues. This book also provides a key to understanding why and how a new genre of bookthe midwifery manual or advice book for pregnant womenarose in sixteenth-century Italy and eventually became a popular genre all over Europe from the early modern period to the present day.