Obstetrics is an umbrella term for the fields of medicine concerned with childbirth (from Latin obstare, “to stand before,” referring to the midwife standing alongside the mother giving birth). Sometimes, the term was confined to the activities of males assisting at birth as distinct from the work of the midwife, regardless of whether the assistants concerned were surgeons, accoucheurs, or academic doctors. However, this was not a mandatory distinction. In the Sp…