The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives

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This ground-breaking, interdisciplinary volume
provides an overdue assessment of how infertility has been understood,
treated and experienced in different times and places. It brings together
scholars from disciplines including history, literature, psychology,
philosophy, and the social sciences to create the first large-scale review of
recent research on the history of infertility. Through exploring an
unparalleled range of chronological periods and geographical regions, it
develops historical perspectives on an apparently transhistorical experience.
It shows how experiences of infertility, access to treatment, and medical
perspectives on this ‘condition’ have been mediated by social, political, and
cultural discourses. The handbook reflects on and interrogates different
approaches to the history of infertility, including the potential of
cross-disciplinary perspectives and the uses of different kinds of historical
source material, and includes lists of research resources to aid teachers and
researchers. It is an essential ‘go-to’ point for anyone interested in
infertility and its history.

Chapter 19 is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.