Eucharius Rösslin

Who was Eucharius Rösslin?

Eucharius Rösslin, sometimes known as Eucharius Rhodion, was a German physician who authored a book about childbirth called Der Rosengarten in 1513, which became a standard medical text for midwives.

He was an apothecary at Freiburg before being elected physician to the city of Frankfurt on Main in 1506. He served as physician to the city of Worms in the service of Katherine, wife of Henry IV, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. While examining and supervising the city's midwives, he found their practice of their trade to be careless and substandard, leading to high infant mortality rates. As a result, he wrote his book, publishing it at Strasburg. Rösslin wrote the work in German; it included engravings by Martin Caldenbach, a pupil of Albrecht Dürer. In its illustrations, Der Rosengarten gave for the first time printed figures of the birth chair, the lying-in chamber, and the positions of the fetus in utero.

Despite his direct observation of midwifery at Worms, Rösslin incorporated information gleaned from writers of antiquity such as Muscio and Soranus of Ephesus. In the introductory prologue in verse to his text, Rosslin emphasizes the importance of the role of men in reproduction and blames midwives who "through neglect and oversight...destroy children far and wide." He threatens midwives with the warning that God will call them to account. "And since no midwife that I've asked / Could tell me anything of her task / I'm left to my medical education."