Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day

From contraception to cloning and pregnancy to populations, reproduction presents urgent challenges today. This field-defining history synthesizes a vast amount of scholarship to take the long view. Spanning from antiquity to the present day, the book focuses on the Mediterranean, western Europe, North America and their empires. It combines history of science, technology and medicine with social, cultural and demographic accounts. Ranging from the most intimate experiences to planetary policy, it tells new stories and revises received ideas. An international team of scholars asks how modern 'reproduction' - an abstract process of perpetuating living organisms - replaced the old 'generation' - the active making of humans and beasts, plants and even minerals. Striking illustrations invite readers to explore artefacts, from an ancient Egyptian fertility figurine to the announcement of the first test-tube baby. Authoritative and accessible, Reproduction offers students and non-specialists an essential starting point and sets fresh agendas for research.

About the Author

Nick Hopwood is Professor of History of Science and Medicine at the University of Cambridge. He is author of Haeckel's Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (2015), which won the 2016 Suzanne J. Levinson Prize of the History of Science Society.

Rebecca Flemming is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Cambridge. She has published widely on medicine and gender in antiquity, including Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (2000).

Lauren Kassell is Reader in History of Science and Medicine at the University of Cambridge and directs the Casbooks Project. Her publications include Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (2005).