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Summary
Histories of early modern medicine and generation have tended to overlook the place that miscarriage, infertility, false conception and uterine diseases had in medical knowledge and women's lives. By exploring English medical literature, casebooks, and letters, the study argues that a wide range of physical events, including miscarriage and false conception or mola, were experienced by women as a pregnancy, and then as the 'loss of pregnancy', or the loss of a potential infant. Early modern women often felt distress, grief and confusion at such losses, and medical practitioners formulated specific responses or treatments to these women's experiences of losses. Considering miscarriage, false conception and uterine masses through the concept of 'pregnancy loss' challenges current narratives about generation. It shows that at this time a variety of gestational experiences, such as non-foetal gravidities and miscarriage formed part of 'generation', alongside the conception and birth of living infants.

This open access book examines the ways that consent operates in contemporary culture, suggesting it is a useful starting point to respectful relationships. This work, however, seeks to delve deeper, into the more complicated aspects of sexual consent. It examines the ways meaningful consent is difficult, if not impossible, in relationships that involve intimate partner violence or family violence. It considers the way vulnerable communities need access to information on consent. It highlights the difficulties of consent and reproductive rights, including the use (and abuse) of contraception and abortion. Finally, it considers the ways that young women are reshaping narratives of sexual assault and consent, as active agents both online and offline. Though this work considers victimisation, it also pays careful attention to the ways vulnerable groups take up their rights and understand and practice consent in meaningful ways.