A Brief History of Obstetric Complications

People have been writing about the diseases of women for as long as there has been medical writing. Nearly a fifth of the oldest collections of western medical texts since that attributed to Hippocrates are dedicated to the female body [41]. Soranus of Ephesus, a renowned medical author who died prior to the birth of Galen (Fig. 1.1a, b), wrote his most important texts precisely on gynecology [26].