While Malta is blessed with a healthy number of writers in most genres, writing about science in general and medical issues in particular is particularly uncommon, and the number of monographs dealing with these issues is not impressive

It is therefore with considerable anticipation that one opens a book such as that written by Professor Charles Savona-Ventura which bears the enticing title: Caring for Calypso’s Daughters: A History of Maternity Care in a Central Mediterranean Island.

This book deals with the history of maternity and child care since antiquity up to the present time. It is a strange biological phenomenon that with the development of a big brain that we as human beings are endowed with, the natural anticipation of a new birth is tinged with a fear of impending disaster. Hence the need for special assistance from gods, saints, midwives and obstetricians.   

The book starts with an interesting chapter relating to ‘The Mother Earth Deity’ with particular emphasis on fertility cults which Maltese archaeology has so abundantly demonstrated. This is followed by a chapter on ‘Sexuality and its consequences’ which continues the story and takes us through post-Roman and medieval times.  I personally find these chapters among the most interesting sections of the book.

The training of midwives and their role in achieving a successful delivery features prominently in this book. Even as late as a century ago we find Dr N Tabone, a general practitioner cum obstetrician in Gozo, complaining that a midwife should be expected to visit a patient ‘for a period of eight days from the date of confinement’ and not leave this job to an inadequately trained hospital nurse. This was a time when infections after childbirth were not uncommon and often fatal.

It has to be borne in mind that fatalities associated with delivery, particularly in those patients who had neglected antenatal care, were of a relatively high frequency. Perhaps the most dramatic directive of all is the injunction placed on priests giving last rites requesting them to perform an emergency caesarean section if they happen to be with a patient who died during delivery! In such instances they were obliged to ensure that they themselves deliver and baptise the dying child thus saving a soul from an eternity in purgatory.

Throughout history, women have been subject to sexual taboos not considered needed equally by men. Baron von Friedrich, a visitor to the island in 1663 comments:

‘If a female [but not male] pimp prostitutes and sells girls or is discovered in her business, she is put on a donkey. Her hands are chained in front while her feet are chained under her. Her back is bare and she has to ride through the streets of the city. She is followed by a man with a trumpet, this man blows the trumpet, she is flogged by a hangman with a whip. Then she is made to embark on a ship and perpetually exiled from the island.’

Not surprisingly, plenty of information about practice during the period of the Knights is available. Particularly interesting are the comments relating to the relationships of the Knights to the local population, both male and female. Another visitor commented:

 ‘Every respectable family had some knight for their patron as a matter of course and to him the honour of a sister or a daughter was sacrificed as a matter of course. … Alas! In nine instances out of ten this patron was the common paramour of every female in the family’.

No wonder that the search for birth control methods was very much in vogue, and plenty of pharmaceutical preparations of doubtful effectiveness were readily available. The seeds from ‘buqexrem’ a common weed (Verbena offinicalis) were particularly popular. Knowing that prevention is better than cure, concoctions from the so called ‘chaste tree’ (Vitex agnus castus) had the power of dampening down sexual urges, a very desirable goal particularly for those who had taken an oath of chastity!

All this in spite of the watchful eye of the Church who considered pre-marital intercourse or cohabitation as a  ‘reserved sin’ to be confessed to a bishop, and might have carried the penalty of excommunication. We are told that ‘Amorous adventures were perhaps not uncommon, but any mischief arising was many times remedied by a hasty marriage, this being more so in Gozo and the outlying villages.’ 

The effect of such a prohibition lasted right up to modern times. We find that the proportion of out-of-wedlock births in Malta has risen steadily since 1992, from around 1-2 percent to reach a figure now of about 30 per cent, one of the highest in Europe.

This gives us an idea of the scope and range from a relatively small section of the book.  Equally interesting and relevant are the empirical data presented in the text, including useful statistical information, and innumerable illustrations of personalities that have contributed to the modern practice to obstetrics and gynaecology.

One could ask: who is this book for? Is it a historical monograph? Is it a treatise on social issues emphasizing the various factors that have wrought havoc with women’s lives over the centuries? Is it a book for the general layperson with which one could curl up in bed on a winter night to learn something  about the wonders of motherhood? It is really a combination of all these, and I have no doubt that it would be found of interest to a wide variety of readers, varying from the general public, students of history, as well as to those with a medical background.

Professor Charles Savona-Ventura is the uncontested medical historian in Malta today, combining his profession as a busy obstetrician/gynaecologist with that of a medical historian. He has to be congratulated on producing such an interesting and instructive monograph.

This book is published by Malta University Press, and the Editorial Board of the University of Malta should be congratulated for including this title in their publications.

 

This book, which sells for €35, is available from leading bookshops or from www.sierra-books.com. For further information please contact Malta University Press, www.um.edu.mt/mup, Tel: 2340 3448 or email: [email protected].

 

 

 

Caring for Calypso’s Daughters:

A History of Maternity Care in a Central Mediterranean Island

ISBN 978- 99909- 45-72- 0

298 pp