![Credit: Wellcome Library, London Gynaecological texts, including information about conception, pregnancy and childbirth - Woman who died in childbirth on operating table, with doctor holding knife after delivering baby by Caesarean section, a nurse holding swaddled child Ink and Watercolour Circa 1420-30 From: MS 49, Apocalypse, (The), [etc.]. Apocalypsis S. Johannis cum glossis et Vita S. Johannis; Ars Moriendi, etc.; Anatomical, medical, texts, theological moral and allegorical 'exempla' and extracts, a few in verse.](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/medieval-caesarean-section.jpg)
Of the more than 200 pieces of advice contained in The Distaff Gospels, a mid-15th-century Old French collection of women’s lore recently available for the first time in modern English, almost half concern aspects of health: pregnancy, predicting the sex of the foetus and ensuring the future wellbeing of the child, as well as practices to avoid sickness and cures for various ailments.












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