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PubMed1994

[Immorals III. Midwives].

This article is the third and last part of a complex anthropological study on 17th and 18th century southern Hungarian sexual customs and deviations as they appeared in witch trials. The first two parts came out in our Com. Art. Hist. Med. vols. 117-120 (1987) pp 87-102, and 133-140 (1991-1992) pp 171-216. The author has studied the papers of 1040 cases and compared it to the most important issues of Hungarian secondary literature of folklore, cultural and social anthropology, and occasionally to history as well. The three papers presented different subjects of these themes. Whereas the first paper dealt with aggression and especially aggression during sexual intercourses, the second one collected those cases which revealed other various forms of deviated sexual behaviour, and prostitution. In this essay the author studied another related area, the job of midwives in village society including not only their main activities in helping labouring women, but their additional work in giving sexual advice, curing various illnesses, and providing baby care. His main concern in this essay, nevertheless, is about witch charges against medwives. ...

History, 17th Century↗

PubMed1987

[Not Available].

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Forensic Medicine↗

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[Immorals].

The materials of this article were collected in the 1980s at the Archives of Szentes and of Hódmezovásárhely, both affiliated to the Csongrád County Archives. They are documents of 408 trials related with sexuality from the south region of the Great Hungarian Plane and from the period between 1723-1843. More specifically, they are partly from the Csongrád county and also from the estates of the Károlyi family. However, since the witnesses of the trials came from a larger area, the documents give information also from cities like Szeged, Szabadka (now Subotica-Vojvodina), Zombor (now Sombor-Vojvodina), Kecskemét, Félegyháza, Makó and some other places. The shelfmarks of the original manuscripts are as follows: Fond IV.A.1006. protocollum judiciale (Vásárhely), Fond IV.A.53. sedes dominalis Károlyiensis (Szentes) and Fond IV.A.21. sedria (i.e. sedes judicaris) (Szentes). Although these documents may attract the attention of scholars, no one has elaborated them yet, probably owing to their sexual character, no matter that their value could be compared to those documents of the witch-trials published by A. Komaromy, F. Schram and E. Pócs. Any kind of monographical elaboration may only be carried out by using different methods of a number of sciences. The author had to apply the methodology of history, demography, law, sociology, folklore, and in the aspect of medicine the accomplishments of diagnostics, folk-medicine and ethnology as well. These different approaches altogether provided a clue for a comprehensive presentation of the culture-historical characteristics, features of the way of life of Hungarian peasants in this period. ...

Forensic Medicine↗