Considerations on the midwife surgeon in the 18th and 19th centuries, the case of Vitoria (Alava, Spain)

The gradual assumption of the Art of Parting by Surgery since the eighteenth century is seen, from the current historiography of midwives, as an illegitimate usurpation protected by a legal corpus supported by a non-objectified premise: that of the high human cost derived from the inexperience of midwives that would be remedied by the competence of surgeons. Focusing on the second aspect, the objective is to know if the surgeons showed that competence in birth. After the review of primary documentation of the 18th and 19th centuries in the city of Vitoria (Alava, Spain), there have been identified 3 direct actions of surgeons in relation to birth, 7 indirect or contextual actions and 3 expert opinions that allow to establish that the surgeons who exercised in Vitoria lacked of demonstrated competences on childbirth both before 1750 and after, when it was requisite to examine themselves to practice as a midwife surgeon, not appreciating more line of development of those competences than the one that can be conjectured by the continuity in the municipal contract replacing midwives; although documentally this continuity came from the economic difficulties of the city council and not from the greater competences demonstrated by the surgeons.