Although the ancient medicine of the mainland is leading the world, due to the existence of the "great defense of men and women", the development of ancient obstetrics and gynecology is very slow.
Here, when it comes to obstetrics and gynecology in ancient times, the "stable wife" has to be mentioned, which is the old folk who took delivering babies for women. Due to the differences in historical period and the region and ethnic culture of the north and south, it has a variety of titles such as "hermit wife", "midwife", "midwife", "midwife" and "old woman", which belongs to the list of "three sisters and six wives" in the jianghu. The local dialect of Yong'an calls children "sisters", so it is called "stable mother" as "sister mother" or "sister mother".
There are historical records that in ancient China, the emergence of Wen Po as a full-time function should have been formed in the Eastern Han Dynasty. By the time of the Tang and Song dynasties, the steady wife as a profession had become very popular. In the local territory, the villagers take the Gongchuan "Da Ru Li" as the center, build temples to worship the ancestors, and people breed, basically following the Central Plains culture, pregnant women sit in the grass pot, and babies fall to the navel. Steady mother-in-law is everywhere.
Moreover, most of the doctors in ancient times were men, so the only ones who could enter the delivery room to deliver babies were "stable mothers". These midwives have limited medical knowledge, and the approach they take is ridiculous and comical to modern people. Before delivering, the midwife asks the Lord's house to open everything that can be opened. For example: boxes for jewelry rouge, wardrobes, etc. It is said that as long as you operate in this way, you can make your child's birth more smoothly.
When opening the box, the steady mother's mouth will continue to read, as if she is performing some kind of mysterious ritual. If this procedure does not have any effect, it indicates that the woman is dystocia. Because, in the case of normal normal delivery, even if the midwife does not carry out these superstitious actions, the mother can successfully give birth to the fetus. Since the birth is difficult, the midwife must take out the "killer skill", that is, hold up the umbrella to "open the eyes of the sky".
At this time, the midwife will take the umbrella to the roof, and then, the umbrella will be opened, and when the midwife performs this series of "rituals", the people around her are forbidden to wear hats, so as to have a better effect. If this does not allow the fetus to be born smoothly, the stable mother will have a "decisive battle" with the gods of the past. She would order the Lord's house to prepare some burnt red charcoal, and then clip the charcoal to the intersection with the largest flow of people to drive away the passing "gods on duty". It is said that by doing so, it would burn the soles of the gods' feet and cause them to leave the place as soon as possible.
According to Wen Po, if the fetus is not born, most of them are frightened by these gods, and if they leave, the fetus will naturally fall to the ground. If these rituals still fail to make the child obedient, then the midwife will not be able to do it. At this point, the midwife can only take the sugar cube and shout at the pregnant woman's stomach to let the baby be born as soon as possible.
These methods of delivery are undoubtedly ineffective, and may be counterproductive.
If a pregnant woman who is already in pain sees the midwife pretending to be a ghost, she may feel that she has offended the gods or the gods who are passing by, but she will be nervous and affect the childbirth. Because this superstitious operation has no practical effect on midwifery, the survival rate of mothers and babies is not high, so the status of ancient midwives is very low.
Most of the stable wives are elderly women who have experienced childbirth, and their medical knowledge is pitifully small, and they do not even have a little medical knowledge. Delivering babies to women relies entirely on experience. In addition, they are not equipped with any surgical tools and complete the process almost bare-handed. However, some midwives have no teacher in the process of delivering babies for many years.
Therefore, in ancient times, there were also some well-known midwives, although they lacked medical equipment and medical knowledge like other midwives, they could use their rich experience to deal with various emergencies. Whether it is injured birth, panintestinal birth or frozen birth, as well as "difficult and complicated diseases" such as blood collapse and bone intercourse, they have their own solutions, and the success rate of solving miscellaneous diseases is quite high. Of course, there are very few such stable wives.
In fact, there is another reason why the ancient stable wives were not respected by the world, that is, they did not abide by "women's morality".
In the eyes of the ancient literati, a qualified woman of a good family should not go out to earn silver, should not go out of the door and not go out of the door, and circle around the pot and pan all her life. Obviously, the three sisters and six mothers- and six mothers-in-law, including the midwife, do not meet this standard. The "three sisters and six wives" walk the streets and alleys, and their knowledge is extremely extensive, but most of them are regarded by traditional scholars as vulgar common sense in the market, and they are quite gossipy. Such a woman is very rebellious in the eyes of the ancients.
In ancient times, whenever everyone was a bridesmaid, they rarely interacted with these women. Even if you talk to the "three sisters and six wives" for a few more words, you will be regarded as a loss of women's morality. Taking the incident of Pan Jinlian's derailment in "Water Margin" as an example, since the moment Wu Dajie went to visit the wang's mother-in-law's house, she had violated female morality. Ancient writers were quite prejudiced against the three sisters and six wives, and most of the "three sisters and six wives" they wrote were old ladies like Wang Po who both loved to pull the tongue of the wife and like to pimp.
Although people do not associate with the "three sisters and six wives", sometimes they have to deal with them because of the particularity of occupations such as tooth mothers, stable women, and matchmakers. In the process of dealing with each other, these women who are at the bottom of society and are good at observing the color of speech often seize the opportunity to take advantage of the opportunity to cheat money.
Therefore, people's impression of "three sisters and six wives", especially the medicine woman, the pious woman, the matchmaker, and the midwife, who deals with people more and more, is getting worse and worse. Sometimes the midwife will also participate in the family's "dispute to seize the wife", collecting bribes to deliberately murder the baby or the mother, which has made the midwife's reputation worse for a while. Looking at the role of midwives in ancient literature, most of them appear in negative images.
This phenomenon is the best evidence of the low status of ancient midwives.
Resources:
【Midwives in Ancient China" and "Water Margin"】