Midwives, Medicine, and the Reproductive Female Body in Manosque, 1289-1500

This paper examines midwives and their practice in the criminal and notarial records from the later-medieval Provencal town of Manosque. This town counted amongst its 5,000 Jewish and Christian inhabitants a relatively high number of medical practitioners; these practitioners appeared frequently in the criminal court to offer testimony and to petition for professional protection. Although the apparent absence in Manosque of midwifery regulation like that present in northern France makes it more difficult to define midwives’ exact responsibilities, their appearance in court alongside other medical practitioners suggests that they possessed an acknowledged expertise of the reproductive female body. This paper situates midwives within the socio-medical milieu from which they are often separated in current historiography. A consideration of cases involving women’s reproductive bodies within the broader context of Manosquin medicine reveals that gender dictated the production and application of knowledge about this subject, but not on the grounds of biological essentialism. Rather, as cases of conception, abortion, and postmortem caeasarean sections reveal, the masculinized professionalism of later-medieval medicine granted male practitioners increasing authority in the realms of reproduction and pregnancy. Although this granted men access to “women’s secrets,” prevailing notions of feminine propriety prevented their theoretical knowledge from transforming into practical application to, or examination of, women’s “secret places.” This placed uncomplicated childbirth, and its attendants, on the margins of the medieval medical. It also made midwives indispensible not only to the women whom she attended in childbirth, but also to the institutions that sought to extend their authority over these concerns to which society otherwise denied them access. The cases from Manosque of adultery, illegitimate pregnancy, and virginity in which midwives appear reveal that the concept of feminine propriety simultaneously granted midwives’ authority over women’s physical reproductive bodies and rendered them instruments in the courts regulation of the female body. These cases, then, illustrate the court’s ability to legitimate and regulate through a symbiotic relationship between institution and society

AGE-modified basement membrane cooperates with Endo180 to promote epithelial cell invasiveness and decrease prostate cancer survival

Biomechanical strain imposed by age-related thickening of the basal lamina and augmented tissue stiffness in the prostate gland coincides with increased cancer risk. Here we hypothesized that the structural alterations in the basal lamina associated with age can induce mechanotransduction pathways in prostate epithelial cells (PECs) to promote invasiveness and cancer progression. To demonstrate this, we developed a 3D model of PEC acini in which thickening and stiffening of basal lamina matrix was induced by advanced glycation end-product (AGE)-dependent non-enzymatic crosslinking of its major components, collagen IV and laminin. We used this model to demonstrate that antibody targeted blockade of CTLD2, the second of eight C-type lectin-like domains in Endo180 (CD280, CLEC13E, KIAA0709, MRC2, TEM9, uPARAP) that can recognize glycosylated collagens, reversed actinomyosin-based contractility [myosin-light chain-2 (MLC2) phosphorylation], loss of cell polarity, loss of cell–cell junctions, luminal infiltration and basal invasion induced by AGE-modified basal lamina matrix in PEC acini. Our in vitro results were concordant with luminal occlusion of acini in the prostate glands of adult Endo180ΔEx2–6/ΔEx2–6 mice, with constitutively exposed CTLD2 and decreased survival of men with early (non-invasive) prostate cancer with high epithelial Endo180 expression and levels of AGE. These findings indicate that AGE-dependent modification of the basal lamina induces invasive behaviour in non-transformed PECs via a molecular mechanism linked to cancer progression. This study provides a rationale for targeting CTLD2 in Endo180 in prostate cancer and other pathologies in which increased basal lamina thickness and tissue stiffness are driving factors

La valeur du travail de care : les nourrices à l’hôpital marseillais du Saint-Esprit (1306-1457)

Cet article, qui porte sur la valeur accordée au travail de care fourni par les nourrices de l’Hôpital du Saint-Esprit à Marseille entre 1306 et 1457, montre que si l’allaitement peut être défini comme une fonction physiologique, il relève également, en tant qu’occupation, d’une construction sociale. En comparant les salaires des nourrices de l’hôpital avec ceux d’autres domestiques, on peut démontrer que la société marseillaise accordait une grande valeur au travail de care fourni par les nourrices. Bien que cette valeur ait en partie dépendu de la rareté des corps pourvoyeurs à la suite de la Grande peste, elle reposait également sur l’appréciation de ce type de soins par la société. Dans l’emploi privé, étudié par d’autres chercheurs, la valeur accordée aux nourrices était liée aux priorités des classes moyennes et supérieures ; alors que dans le cas de l’institution hospitalière du Saint-Esprit, elle provenait d’un impératif de charité à fournir aux membres les plus vulnérables de la sociétéThis article examines the value placed on the care work performed by the wet-nurses of the Hôpital du Saint-Esprit in Marseille. It relies on the account books of the hospital from 1306-1457 to illustrate that while the act of wet- nursing was biological, the occupation of wet-nurse was a biosocial construction. A comparison of the wages paid to the wet-nurses of the hospital, when considered alongside the wages earned by other domestic servants, illustrates that medieval society in Marseille valued highly the care work provided by wet-nurses. Although this value arose, in part, from a physical shortage of nurses in the wake of the Black Death, it arose also from the socio-cultural valuation of this type of caregiving. In the private employment of wet-nurses studied by other scholars, this value arose from the preferences of the middle and upper classes, while in the institutional setting of the hospital, it arose from a charitable imperative to care for the marginal members of society