Der Swangern Frauwen vnd Hebammen Rosengarten.

Eucharius Rösslin’s “Rose Garden” is considered to be the first significant manual on obstetrics in German. The author, the Frankfurt town physician, also made use of Greek and Latin texts from antiquity, above all the work by Soranus of Ephesus about midwifery and gynaecological disorders. Rösslin’s successful manual was translated into Latin by his son (and successor as town physician) and was translated into further languages. It is decorated with two attractive whole-page woodcuts: one shows a woman on the birthing stool, in the other (even printed double) the author hands his work to Duchess Katharina of Brunswick, his patron. Numerous further illustrations show the position of the foetus and of twin foetuses in the womb.