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Midwifery in the Middle Ages was a significant piece of women's work and health prior to the professionalization of medicine. During the Middle Ages in Western Europe, people relied on the medical knowledge of Roman and Greek philosophers, specifically Galen, Hippocrates, and Aristotle. These medical philosophers focused primarily on the health of men, and women's health issues were understudied. This lack of research led to the general assumption that women's health should be handled by women, especially concerning pregnancy. An additional opposition to men's involvement in childbearing was that men should not associate with female genitalia throughout the secret practices of childbearing. Thus, male physicians rarely interfered with the pregnant patients or the birthing process, unless something had gone unexpectedly wrong. The prevalence of this mindset allowed women to continue the practice of midwifery throughout most of the medieval era with seemingly little male interference. However, it is likely that the control of men over women's births and reproductive affairs, was always conditional. Moving out of the middle ages and into a world of medical licensing and preference toward formally trained physicians, midwives would fade into obscurity for quite some time.
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