MIDWIFERY, in Edinburgh. Original engraved admission card to the Lectures on Midwifery and the Diseases of Women & Children, by John Thatcher MD, Member of the Royal College of Physicians &c &c, Edinburgh.  It is made out to Mr David Lyell, Second Course, and dated 1828 in the top right hand corner. Printed in blue.
10cm x 15cm. 1828.


~ John Thatcher (1785-1853) was an extra-mural lecturer of midwifery and member of Queen's College in Edinburgh during the first half of the 19th century. He practised from 23 Elder Street and was at times listed as both a physician to the Edinburgh Lying-In Institution and physician and founder to the Edinburgh General Dispensary and Lying-In Institution. He began practicing as an accoucheur, or man-midwife, in November 1806 and is known to have seen several hundred patients each year. Thatcher was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and vied with James Young Simpson (1811-1870) for the Chair of Midwifery at Edinburgh University in 1839.