Next steps in the RSE funded “They wept together” project
UHI Centre for History's Dr Philippa Woodcock recently secured funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) for her project ‘"They wept together": Investigating miscarriage, taboo and support in early modern Scotland’, advancing research into the emotional experience of miscarriage. Her most recent research trip took her to the University of Aberdeen' Special Collections, where she examined notes by Dr David Skene (1731-1770), including intricately detailed obstetric case-studies.
In the most recent blog post for the project, Dr Woodcock explores her findings in more detail. Dr Skene, graduated MA from Marischal College in 1748 and after training in medicine and midwifery in Edinburgh, London and Paris, returned to Aberdeen, where he was awarded MD in 1753. He established midwifery training in the city, and is noted as a founding father of women’s healthcare in Aberdeen.
Among his general practice notes are graphic accounts of miscarriage, but they also include the happier yet perplexing case of Mrs Irvine – case 53 from 1769.
Dr Philippa Woodcock's research project seeks uncover how families broached the subject in the early modern past, largely through the study of their correspondence. Was miscarriage named euphemistically or explicitly? Did the sex or the religion of the author and recipient influence discourse, and how did families broach the contrast between one couple’s successful childbearing and another’s loss? Most importantly, how did families recover after miscarriage?