About obgynhistory.net

As the name implies, obgynhistory.net is devoted to historical aspects of midwifery, obstetrics, gynecology, and the diseases of women.

Professionals in these fields will find thousands of active links --enough to provide months of casual reading, or to serve as a resource for writers or Grand-Round speakers seeking background information and case-histories not readily available from the usual WEB searches.

But there's a lot more...

Because OBGYN is a relatively recent specialty, its development is best appreciated in a broader cultural and medical context. The curious general reader will thus find many interesting topics, particularly under the Antiquity, Geographic and Miscellanea menu tabs.

This site went public on December 27, 2015, joining its sister-website history-of-obgyn.com.

My first site, history-of-obgyn.com, was launched in November 2014, primarily as occupational therapy for a recently-retired Canadian/American OBGYN with an interest in the history of his profession.

I have collected antiquarian books and instruments for over 35 years. During the first two decades, I spent many evenings in libraries photocopying journal articles. When EBAY came along, I bought dozens of discarded bound journals to tear up, and expanded my collection of plastic-protected articles catalogued in over 200 three-ring binders. As evermore books and instruments accumulated on the shelves in my man-cave, my wife asked: “What are you going to do with all this s***?”

That particular pack-rat activity stopped around 2007, when GOOGLE began digitizing entire university libraries. Since I had always been more interested in the content of old books than in their value as artifacts, it seemed more convenient to go the digital route. I used slow on-call time to download literally thousands of books and journals from GOOGLE and other Internet sites. Anticipating retirement and house-downsizing, I gradually scanned most of my articles and got rid of the binders. My database currently takes up about 700GB on a portable USB drive. Most of the books and instruments are in storage --awaiting a later stage of retirement when I hope to sell them back on EBAY to those who prefer tangibles to bytes, and have the space for them.

My original website history-of-obgyn.com was designed using the “drag and drop” WEEBLY PRO software available through my hosting site Hostgator.com. I use ADOBE ACROBAT PRO and PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS to process and optimize articles and images from my database.

I have since become modestly competent in Front-End WEB design, and am writing my own code for obgynhistory.net, using BOOTSTRAP v.3.3.6 for the framework. It may eventually incorporate some interactive (Back-End) features as I learn how to do that. Since this is a non-commercial site, I choose to emphasize content over appearance.

To minimize screen clutter, I have avoided the drop-down menus of the 1st website. Instead, the menu bar at the top serves as a "bread crumb" trail --highlighting the current page in its hierarchical context, with available sub-menus listed after.

Ronald M. Cyr M.D.

I received my M.D. from the University of Toronto in 1977. After completing my OBGYN training at McGill University, I worked as a general OBGYN in Canada and the USA until 2014. I retired from clinical practice in 2014 as an Associate Professor at Michigan State University.

I am the 2003 ACOG/Ortho-McNeil Fellow in the History of American Obstetrics and Gynecology, and author of various articles on historical topics.

In 2010, Dr. Thomas F. Baskett and I published a critically-acclaimed English translation of François Rousset’s 1581 treatise on Cesarean Section.

Collaboration

I appreciate any constructive feedback, and am happy to be a resource person or co-author to anyone looking to collaborate on a historical article for publication (or not).

Please contact me at: ronaldmcyr@gmail.com.

Note that this is not an active link. Until I can write secure back-end code, this prevents my inbox from being flooded with robot-generated SPAM.

Copyright Issues

The material in my database was acquired over many years for my own use, and I have not always kept track of its origin. I am making it available to a wider audience in a spirit of information-sharing for personal, non-commercial use.

Most of the free GOOGLE books and journals were published before 1925 or so, and assumed to be in the public domain in the USA. There are only a few articles published in the last 50 years on my site.

If any readers believe I have infringed upon their copyright, and are unwilling to grant post-hoc permission, please contact me at: ronaldmcyr@gmail.com.

Spam

If you are selling a product, service, or promoting a commercial site, please don’t clutter my inbox.

Ronald M. Cyr M.D.