Today’s Google Doodle honors the German midwife Justin (Justine) Sigemund, who published a pioneering manual of obstetrics in the 17th century.

She became the first woman in Germany to write a book on obstetrics, and the first woman to publish a major medical text in German in general.

On March 28, 1690, the University of Frankfurt Oder certified her book “The Court Midwife” (“Die Chur-Brandenburgische Hoff-Wehe-Mutter”) as an official medical textbook at a time when few women had access to education.

Justine Sigemund, daughter of the Lutheran priest Elias Dietrich, was born on December 26, 1636 in Ronstock, Lower Silesia, an area that today belongs to Poland. As a young woman, she had a prolapsed uterus that the uninformed midwives of her day misdiagnosed as pregnancy. This disappointing experience led her to become a midwife in order to improve midwifery education.

After her apprenticeship, she started working as a midwife offering free services to underprivileged women. She soon became known for her ability to safely care for women in difficult births, causing her fame to spread throughout the Germanic world.

In 1683 she accepted the official position of Midwife of the City of Lignitz and later became Court Midwife in Berlin, where she gave birth to children of the royal family. It was then that she wrote and published the book “The Midwife of the Court” with which she not only left her mark in the history of medicine, but also significantly improved the health of mother-infant in Germany.

Her book was the first to offer a comprehensive guide to childbirth in Germany. Until then, German midwives had largely passed on their knowledge through oral tradition. There was no standardized way of documenting safe birth practices.

Justine Sigemund died in Berlin on November 10, 1705, aged 68.