Childbirth and Mental Distress in the 15th-century Mediterranean: Jewish and Christian Perspectives

An enigmatic line in a Hebrew Castilian medical casebook notes that the doctor treated a pregnant woman suffering sorrow and loss. Taking this text as a point of departure, Prof. Cohen Hanegbi will analyze Hebrew, Latin, and vernacular sources to elucidate the medical, religious, and social contexts of mental health care for parturients in the late medieval Mediterranean.

In so doing, she will elucidate Jewish and Christian understandings of women's mental health before, during, and after childbirth.