Surgery at the Service of Theology
Postmortem Cesarean Sections in Puerto Rico and the Royal Cedula of 1804
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2838845 |
|---|---|
| Authors | José G Rigau-Pérez (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1995 |
| Volume | 75 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 377 |
| Publication date | 1995-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Hispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2517227 |
| PMID | 11608964 |
| OpenAlex | W4245238810 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 2 |
Charles IV issued a royal cedula (ad monition with the force of law) ordering the civil and religious officials in Spanish America and the Philip pines to ensure that no pregnant woman was buried unless a cesarean section was carried out. The order was meant to assure that living fetuses received baptism (which the Roman Catholic church considered an indispensable requirement for salvation) and to save them from being buried inside their mothers.1 At the time, European monarchs generally were concerned with expanding the population. But this was also a period in which professional roles had a different definition than we now assign to them. If a surgeon were not quickly available, the operation was to be performed by anyone, following the instructions in the cedula (written by professors of the College of Surgery in Madrid). The overlap in medical and religious expertise was such that midwives and physicians could be trusted to give the correct instructions for baptism, and monks could be renowned for their ideas about physiology. The text provides significant insights into the tensions between the administrative, scientific, and religious spheres of the ancien regime Spanish dominions. It allows us to examine the route through which a request by a priest from Bogota became law for the entire empire
Ancien regime · Baptism · Gynecology · Order (exchange) · Political science · Population · Section (typography) · Service (business) · Sociology · Classics · Cuban History and Society · Demography · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American history and culture · Law · Medicine · Surgery
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,35 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2024 (16) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |