Obstetrics and Gynaecology

Clinical obstetrics developed as a branch of surgery, and was often embroiled in a demarcation dispute with midwives. The intellectual search for the origin of life through anatomical studies of the gravid uterus and the male and female genital tract began with Leonardo da Vinci and was taken up by successive generations of medical scientists. Belief in spontaneous generation of individuals or species was gradually discarded in the face of experiments by "natural philosophers".

In a parallel with anatomy, comparative embryology, exemplified by studies of the developing chick, assumed great significance in the nineteenth century as a separate line of evidence in favour of the theory of evolution.