Medical Specialty

Obstetrics and Gynecology

Also Known As OB-GYN

Surgical Specialties

Origin Recognized as specialties in the mid-nineteenth century; the British College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was founded in September 1929.

The specialty concerned with pregnancy, childbirth and the reproductive health of women. Obstetrics and gynecology were recognized as specialties in the mid-nineteenth century, but full professional independence came only in 1929 with the founding of the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London. The specialty's history is inseparable from major nineteenth-century advances such as obstetric anesthesia, and from ethically fraught chapters such as the origins of modern gynecological surgery.

Facts

Origin Period

Recognized as specialties in the mid-nineteenth century; the British College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was founded in September 1929. 2

Classification

Type/Classification

Surgical Specialty 1

Learn More

Anarcha, Betsey, Lucy and the Price of Gynecology

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

James Marion Sims is remembered in most medical histories as the father of modern gynecology, the surgeon who in the 1840s perfected a repair for vesicovaginal fistula, a devastating and then untreatable complication of childbirth. What is less often told alongside that achievement is how the technique was developed. Working in Montgomery, Alabama, Sims operated on enslaved women who had no power to refuse, most famously a woman named Anarcha, on whom he performed roughly thirty operations, without anesthesia, before he considered the repair perfected. Two other enslaved women, Betsey and Lucy, are also named in the surviving record. Anesthesia existed by the later years of this work, but Sims did not use it on these patients, a choice historians read against the era's racist medical belief that Black patients felt pain differently. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, in its own education materials, poses the question plainly: if Sims is the father of modern gynecology, are Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy not its mothers. The Medicine Atlas records this as a documented historiographical dissent, not a settled verdict, because the historical record supports both the fact of Sims's surgical achievement and the fact of how it was obtained, and a reader deserves both.

A College Born in Protest: 1929

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

For most of the nineteenth century, obstetrics and gynecology existed in Britain as junior partners to general surgery and general medicine, their practitioners without a professional home of their own. Specialist societies had formed as early as the 1850s, but a full college, with the standing to set its own examinations and speak with its own authority, did not exist. That changed only after a deliberate campaign. William Blair-Bell and William Fletcher Shaw spent four years pressing the case against real institutional resistance before the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was finally founded in September 1929, with Blair-Bell as its first president. The Royal Charter that gave the College its full standing did not arrive until 1947, eighteen years later. The delay is itself the story: obstetrics and gynecology had to fight to be recognized as a specialty in its own right, at a time when the care of pregnant women was still widely treated as a lesser branch of surgery rather than a discipline demanding its own expertise.

FAQs

When did obstetrics and gynecology become an independent profession?

Full independence came in 1929 with the founding of the College in London.

The two fields were recognized as specialties in the mid-nineteenth century, but full professional independence came only in September 1929, when the British College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was founded in London with Blair-Bell as its President and Fletcher Shaw as Honorary Secretary.

Connections

Associated With

Amniocentesis

Amniocentesis is a prenatal diagnostic procedure performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Anesthesia

James Young Simpson introduced chloroform into obstetric practice for the first time in a delivery on 8 November 1847, a landmark in obstetric anesthesia.

Source James Young Simpson

Assisted Reproductive Technology

Assisted reproductive technology is practiced within obstetrics and gynecology, specifically reproductive endocrinology.

Chorionic Villus Sampling

Chorionic villus sampling is a prenatal diagnostic procedure performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Colposcopy

Colposcopy is a diagnostic procedure performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Egg Donation

Egg donation is a fertility procedure performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Embryo Cryopreservation

Embryo cryopreservation is a fertility preservation technique performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Embryo Transfer

Embryo transfer is a step of in vitro fertilization performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Endometriosis

Gamete Intrafallopian Transfer

Gamete intrafallopian transfer is a fertility procedure performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Human Papillomavirus Infection

Sexually transmitted viral infection, principal cause of cervical cancer; obstetrics-and-gynecology specialty.

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection is an in vitro fertilization technique performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Intrauterine Insemination

Intrauterine insemination is a fertility procedure performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Medical Ultrasound

Obstetric sonography, developed by Ian Donald in the late 1950s and 1960s, was one of the earliest major clinical applications of medical ultrasound.

Oocyte Cryopreservation

Oocyte cryopreservation is a fertility preservation technique performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Ovulation Induction

Ovulation induction is a fertility treatment performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Preconception Counseling

Preconception counseling is provided within obstetrics and gynecology.

Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis is used alongside in vitro fertilization within obstetrics and gynecology.

Prenatal Testing

Prenatal testing is performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Surrogacy

Surrogacy arrangements involve fertility procedures performed within obstetrics and gynecology.

Long-Form Articles

A College Born in Protest: 1929

Anarcha, Betsey, Lucy and the Price of Gynecology

Notable Specialists

Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau

Source Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau (Wikipedia)

André Levret

Source André Levret (Wikipedia)

Anna Heer

Source Anna Heer (Wikipedia)

Anna Honzáková

Source Anna Honzáková (Wikipedia)

Antoine Dubois

Source Antoine Dubois (Wikipedia)

Barnett Slepian

Source Barnett Slepian (Wikipedia)

Bernhard Sigmund Schultze

Source Bernhard Sigmund Schultze (source article)

Bernhard Zondek

Source Bernhard Zondek (Wikipedia)

Carl Arnold Ruge

Source Carl Arnold Ruge (Wikipedia)

Carl Caspar von Siebold

Source Carl Caspar von Siebold (source article)

Carl Gustav Carus

Source Carl Gustav Carus (Wikipedia)

Carl Heinrich Stratz

Source Carl Heinrich Stratz (Wikipedia)

Dietrich Wilhelm Heinrich Busch

Source Dietrich Wilhelm Heinrich Busch (Wikipedia)

Domenico Scilipoti

Source Domenico Scilipoti (Wikipedia)

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson founded the New Hospital for Women, focused on women's health.

Ephraim McDowell

Ephraim McDowell, called the father of ovariotomy, performed the first successful ovarian tumor removal.

Ernst Gräfenberg

Source Ernst Gräfenberg (Wikipedia)

Ernst Ludwig Alfred Hegar

Source Alfred Hegar (Deutsche Biographie)

Ferdinand August Maria Franz von Ritgen

Source Ferdinand August Maria Franz von Ritgen (source article)

François Mauriceau

Source François Mauriceau (Wikipedia)

Franz Naegele

Source Franz Naegele (source article)

Friedrich Schauta

Source Friedrich Schauta (Wikipedia)

Georges Burou

Source Georges Burou (Wikipedia)

Heinrich August Wrisberg

Source Heinrich August Wrisberg (source article)

Hermann Heinrich Ploss

Source Hermann Heinrich Ploss (source article)

Jacob Moritz Blumberg

Source Jacob Moritz Blumberg (Wikipedia)

Jacques Guillemeau

Source Jacques Guillemeau (Wikipedia)

James Marion Sims

James Marion Sims developed a fistula-repair surgical technique; his own entity description states plainly that this was done through non-consensual surgery on enslaved women.

James Young Simpson

James Young Simpson was an obstetrician who pioneered chloroform anesthesia in childbirth.

Jean-Louis Baudelocque

Source Jean-Louis Baudelocque (source article)

Johann Georg Roederer

Source Johann Georg Roederer (source article)

Julius Scriba

Source Julius Scriba (Wikipedia)

Karl Gottlob Kühn

Source Karl Gottlob Kühn (source article)

Khairuddin Mohamed Yusof

Source Khairuddin Mohamed Yusof (source article)

Kurt Semm

Source Kurt Semm (Wikipedia)

Luigi Galvani

Source Luigi Galvani (Wikipedia)

Marie Boivin

Source Marie Boivin (Wikipedia)

Marie Colinet

Source Marie Colinet (Wikipedia)

Martha Ballard

Ballard was a New England midwife whose diary, kept from 1785 to 1812, records roughly eight hundred births she attended along with other maternal and family medical care.

Matthew D. Mann

Source Matthew D. Mann (Wikipedia)

Maud Chadburn

Source Maud Chadburn (source article)

Nadezhda Suslova

Source Nadezhda Suslova (Wikipedia)

Nand Peeters

Source Nand Peeters (source article)

Patrick Steptoe

Source Patrick Steptoe (Wikipedia)

Philipp Friedrich Theodor Meckel

Source Philipp Friedrich Theodor Meckel (Wikipedia)