Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Elizabeth Cellier
-
Standard Name: Cellier, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Dormer
Married Name: Elizabeth Cellier
The small but significant literary output of seventeenth-century midwife EC
amounts to three pamphlets on topical religious, medical, and gender issues, notably including the attempt to establish midwifery as a profession parallel to the male medical professions.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Family and Intimate relationships | Lady Lucy Herbert | Lady Powis (as she was until 1689) |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Lady Lucy Herbert | This was the outcome of the Meal Tub Plot, so called after the container in Elizabeth Cellier
's kitchen where evidence was planted. Lady Powis was then granted bail, and the charges against her... |
| Family and Intimate relationships | Winifred Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale | Lady Winifred's mother, Elizabeth Herbert, Baroness and eventually Duchess of Powis
, came from an influential Catholic
royalist family. One of her great-grand-mothers was the Renaissance translator Elizabeth Russell
(one of the famous Cook sisters)... |
| politics | Lady Rachel Russell | Always attentive to the undercurrents of political behaviour (she reported the demeanour of Elizabeth Cellier
in the pillory in a tone that sounds sympathetic although they were on different sides of the party divide), LRR |
| Author summary | Jane Sharp | JS
, who published in 1671, stands in a line of militant midwife-writers, close to Elizabeth Cellier
before her and followed after a longer lapse of time by Elizabeth Nihell
. Like theirs, her text is proto-feminist. |
| Textual Features | Aphra Behn | Maria, the beautiful, speechless protagonist of The Dumb Virgin, has an elder sister, Belvidera, who is visibly deformed in limb: both disabilities are due to their mother's emotional state at their birth, to a... |
| Textual Features | Elizabeth Nihell | Like Elizabeth Cellier
, Nihell claims authority for women from ancient history. It was probably Eve, she says, not Adam, who delivered the first human babies. The mother of Socrates
was a midwife, and inoculation... |
| Textual Production | Florence Nightingale | She dedicated this work to Phainarete
, mother of Socrates
, who was reputedly a midwife. Dossey, Barbara Montgomery. Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer. Springhouse Corporation, 2000. 311 Without her knowing it, her proposal followed in the footsteps of that submitted by Elizabeth Cellier
in 1687... |
| Theme or Topic Treated in Text | Sophia Jex-Blake | SJB
here discusses the benefit of women doctors in the treatment of female patients. She takes the reader through a timeline of women in medicine, dating back as far as ancient Greece, and including... |
Timeline
1670
The Hôtel Dieu
in Paris was given letters patent to operate as a sanctuary for abandoned babies; it also operated as a centre for training nurses, run by nuns.
1872
The Obstetrical Association of Midwives
, an autonomous body, precursor to the Royal College of Midwives
, was developed to campaign for better standing for female midwives.
31 July 1902
The Midwives Act instigated the creation of a Central Midwives' Board
to formulate practice requirements and gave midwives a separate and limited sphere of influence (though not quite the professional standing that Elizabeth Cellier
had...