On the consequences of childbirth: obstetrics/gynaecology, comparative anatomy and racial theories in 19th century France and Brazil.

Abstract

The following paper is centred on an analysis of comparative studies of the human pelvis developed over the 19th century by mostly French natural scientists, physical anthropologists, students of the human anatomy and doctors engaged in the initial stages of the emerging fields of gynaecology and obstetrics. As this paper will argue, there was considerable overlap between these specialisations, producing a fundamentally masculine, Eurocentric and racialised knowledge that had an enormous impact in establishing racially informed gynaecological and obstetric practices. This paper argues that comparative pelvic anatomy studies originated from the belief that African and Black women had specifically different pelves and genitalia and served to stratify women of different races and promoted racially oriented obstetric and gynaecological treatments. Despite their European origins, these French publications had profound repercussions across various regions of the Atlantic world and directly influenced the medical care provided to women of African descent in both slave and postemancipation societies, particularly in Brazil. In 1887, a doctoral candidate from the Rio de Janeiro Medical School (Brazil) wrote a dissertation in which he advocated and justified the racialised treatments offered to enslaved, free and soon-to-be-free women of African descendent who delivered their offspring at the medical school's maternity ward. In his advocacy for such practices, the author drew connections between the prevailing methods at Rio de Janeiro's Medical School to a long lineage of French medical thought on the racialised comparative anatomy of women's pelvises throughout the 19th century.