ENTRE A ARTE E A CIÊNCIA:

parteiras, cirurgiões-parteiros e a medicalização do parto no Portugal setecentista

Abstract

From the early modern period onward, the medicalization of childbirth and motherhood intensified in Europe, becoming part of a broader movement toward the consolidation of medicine as a scientific field and the emergence of modern science. Although not exclusive to the Portuguese context, this process assumed specific characteristics in Portugal during the eighteenth century, in which traditional childbirth practices, female empirical knowledge, and new models of medical training coexisted and were transformed. Drawing on the writings of learned authors who worked in Portugal and published in Portuguese during the seventeenth century, this article analyzes the insertion of the surgeon-midwife into the field of childbirth, considering his practice in dialogue with the work historically performed by midwives. It argues that the incorporation of the surgeon-midwife did not occur solely through simple relations of opposition or replacement of midwives, but rather through complex interactions, negotiations, and redefinitions of authority among different agents and forms of knowledge, revealing the social, cultural, and institutional dynamics that shaped the medicalization of childbirth in eighteenth-century Portugal