Birthing girdle shows traces of medieval women in labor
By (0)
While they don t know how they were worn, recent biological analysis of a medievel birthing girdle confirms that women wore them including the one pictured, which includes prayers for delivery and birth. Photo courtesy of Wellcome Collection
In medieval Europe, when childbirth was highly perilous for both mother and child, women and those caring for them used various talismans to try to influence a safe delivery.
Not many of those relics have survived, but scientists have been studying one a parchment birthing girdle using non-invasive sampling and protein analysis.