Mother Giving Birth

Valerie French, in "Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World," gives as a worse case projection that 5% of babies born in ancient Greece and Rome may have died before they reached the age of one month, and 5 out of 20,000 women would die. For information on obstetrics we have Pliny the Elder, Soranus, Celsus, and Galen. Objects considered beneficial for speeding delivery included hyena's feet, snake sloughs, canine placentas, sticks, and vulture feathers. During the actual delivery there were three women on the sides and back of the paturient, with the midwife in front.