During the 17th century, childbirth was a complicated business. There was limited knowledge and limited resources. Moreover, midwives too had limited resorts to make it work for both the mother and her baby. There were fatal scenarios even with the most minor complications during the delivery. As a midwife in the 17th century, Justine Siegemund created a history that revolutionalized the obstetrics panorama. She was the very first German woman to write a book about obstetrics from a woman’s perspective. This was a revolutionary book for that time as it made childbirth more efficient for both the baby and the mother.
The idea of the book came to Justine while she was struggling with her own health problems. Fueled by her own troubles, she took the lead to educate herself more on women’s bodies, pregnancy, and chilbirth. Besides this, she took a step ahead and wrote a book named “The Court Midwife” in 1690 to share her learnings and techniques with others too. She became one of the most talented midwives of her time and delivered thousands of babies with success.
Let us dive into her story and how a book from a woman’s perspective made childbirth much easier and efficient in that time.
Justine Siegemund: Inspiration for the Book
Justine Siegemund was born in Rohnstock, Lower Silesia sometime in 1636. At that time, the childbirth practices were shared by mouth and oral communication often resulted in miscommunications. It was not her idea to improve the childbirth techniques in the beginning. However, the events in her life pushed her to study about women bodies and further into the obstretics. Her own struggles with health piqued her interest in learning and expanded further.

Justine had some problems with her uterus, probably a prolapsed uterus. In simpler words, her uterus and the muscles or ligaments that were around the uterus were weaker than the normal. Her symptoms of this problem were similar to pregnancy. For example, feeling heaviness in the lower abdomen. This made midwives to treat her as a pregnant woman with no results and further increasing the complications.
After a while, Siegemund got irritated with the erroneous treatment from the midwives and set out to learn about midwifery, women and their bodies.
Justine Siegemund: Journey as a Midwife
Midwives in Germany used to guard their techniques fiercely at that time. However, with constant efforts, Justine was able to become an educated midwife and started delivering babies by the year 1659. At first, when Justine first started working as a midwife, Justine Siegemund only helped poor women in childbirth. However, her techniques were very different from those of her fellows and she rarely used drugs or other surgical pieces of equipment.
As soon as she made a name for herself, she started working for the noble families in the society. And not much later, she was summoned to Berlin to serve as the official midwife of the court. It was 1701. That was in Berlin where she grew a reputation and excelled in taking care of the royal ladies. She not only helped them in a smooth childbirth but also helped them with cervical tumors.
Justine Siegemund: The Court Midwife
One time, the Queen Mary II of England, pleased by Justine’s assistance asked her to write down some instructional notes for the midwives of her court in England. At that time, most of the medical texts were written by men, and midwives still shared information orally. But complying with the Queen’s request, Justine wrote “The Court Midwife” in 1690.
Her notes included information on early deliveries at 36 weeks while the notion at that time was that a baby can only survive after 40 weeks in the womb. Justine Siegemund also wrote about how important it was to puncture the amniotic sac as it would eliminate the placenta hemorrhages. Seigmund’s book also included the cases where she had to rotate a baby as it was a shoulder first case that can be fatal for both the mother and the child. All of her notes and previous cases helped people to understand that not only men can deliver babies successfully.
As the saying goes, people who do something out of the box often get a backlash. It was the same for Justine. Many male physicians and even midwives accused her of spreading ill practices regarding childbirth. Despite this, The Court Midwife made a revolutionary change. It was not long before the book was published first in German and then translated into other languages.
Before Justine’s book, there was no other medical text that one could use to educate themselves about childbirth and related topics. This was one of the reasons behind the success of The Court Midwife.
By the time she died, at the age of 68, she had already delivered 6,200 babies with success. This was an observation made by a deacon at Berlin during her funeral in 1705. However, she left a legacy behind her in the form of a book. Hence, her story was just not hers, but of everyone who used that book to educate themselves.
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