Description
Book SynopsisExplores the history of the postmortem cesarean operation, which was performed in order to extract the fetus and save its soul through baptism. Examines accounts of the operation from across the Spanish empire in the eighteenth century.
Trade Review“Baptism Through Incision offer[s] a varied, rich perspective on the ways in which print culture, pickled with the ideologies of patriarchy, white supremacy, and empire, has determined women’s bodies as sites of contention across space and time.”
—Kathleen Alves Eighteenth-Century Studies
“This illuminating volume should encourage readers to revisit assumptions about rigid medical specialties and academic disciplines centered on the study of the human person. We are challenged to rethink the rise of the modern medical profession and the role of religious people, worldviews, and institutions in it.”
—Paul Ramírez,author of Enlightened Immunity: Mexico’s Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason
Table of ContentsForeword
Acknowledgments
Translator’s Note
Introduction: Postmortem Cesareans and Pedro José de Arrese’s Guatemalan Treatise in Historical Context
1. Arrese’s Text: Physical, Canonical, Moral Principles . . . on the Baptism of Miscarried Fetuses and the Cesarean Operation on Women Who Die Pregnant
Translated by Nina M. Scott
2. Additional Translations from Across the Spanish Empire
Translated by Martha Few, Zeb Tortorici, and Adam Warren
Excerpt from Spain
Excerpts from Colonial Peru and Río de la Plata
Excerpts from Colonial Guatemala
Excerpts from Colonial New Spain
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
