As Starkey noted, rumors had circulated since 1514 that “the King of England meant to repudiate his present wife … since he is unable to have children by her,” thus ascribing blame to Catherine. As detailed in Table 1, her first miscarriage/still birth in 1510 was followed by further miscarriages and the loss of an infant son. Catherine fell pregnant regularly within the first ten years of the marriage the announcement of her first pregnancy occurred just two months after the wedding (when she was twenty-four). Henry married his brother’s widow Catherine of Aragon (born 1485), who was six years his senior, almost immediately on becoming king. Table 1 lists his wives, children, and failed pregnancies, so far as known. Having become just the second monarch of a shaky new dynasty at the age of seventeen in 1509, Henry VIII was obsessed with producing a healthy male heir. An exploration of the historical background of male infertility helps to challenge the image of male infertility as a condition of weakness in affected men. Due to the historical idea that producing healthy children is the exclusive responsibility of women, male infertility remains an emasculating condition carrying a powerful social stigma, which often impairs the ability of men and their partners to seek appropriate support.
However, only a minority of health-care systems and couples worldwide can afford the high costs of art, and only limited research has been performed in recent decades on the development of novel therapies for couples with male infertility. Currently, the only approved therapy for affected couples with male infertility is assisted reproductive technology ( art), such as in-vitro fertilization therapy ( ivf) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection ( icsi). 3įactors impairing male fertility, such as semen oxidative stress and sperm dna fragmentation, are normally elevated in male partners of women with rpl when compared with other men. Recent studies highlight that damaged sperm from men may be the reason why women suffer repeated miscarriages. Furthermore, a growing body of research suggests that deficient sperm function in a male partner can predispose couples to recurrent pregnancy loss ( rpl) or miscarriage, which is commonly defined as three or more consecutive pregnancy losses prior to twenty weeks’ gestation, affecting 1 to 2 percent of couples. Male infertility (reduced sperm function) currently affects half of all couples seeking fertility treatment, and global sperm counts are reported to have halved since the 1970s. The traditional focus on women regarding recurrent miscarriage was also due to the fact that, although females normally produce single eggs, millions of male sperm are automatically subject to “natural selection,” only the fittest among them able to reach and fertilize an egg. Identifiable reasons for miscarriage are not always easy or even possible to determine, but increasingly moving attention from women to men has recently led to investigations into male chromosomes, dna, and lifestyle choices, such as diet and exercise. Male infertility was not recognized as a significant issue until the early modern period, roughly around the turn of the seventeenth century. Bartholomew’s Hospital London, which warned, “When sterility happens between married people, the males are accused by many people of not having suitable seed.” Similarly, Evans pointed out that the historical focus on female infertility has largely relegated male reproductive failure to sexual performance and impotence. Witness, for example, the late fourteenth-century treatise by John of Mirfield, St. Yet, notwithstanding Rider’s observation that scholars have tended to neglect males’ reproductive disorders in the Middle Ages compared with females’, early references to male infertility are available.
Suffice it to say that it was usually, but not always, confined to an inability to perform. Space does not allow a complete survey of the late medieval/early modern medical literature that included a mention of male infertility. The understanding at this time that men as well as women could suffer from problems of infertility was tentative and unlikely to have been countenanced by a Tudor monarch. No issue with Henry, but had baby with subsequent husband Katherine Howard married to Henry 1540–1542Īge at marriage was c 16 or 17. Marriage was annulled on 9 July 1540, on the grounds of non-consummation. Edward died aged 15 without issueĪnne of Cleves married to Henry January–July 1540 Miscarriage in 4th month (brought on by shock?) Stillborn or lived a few days/hours (8 months)Įlizabeth I, died without issue aged 69 (unmarried assumed not sexually active)
Mary Tudor died without issue aged 42 (married to Philip II of Spain 1555) Catherine of Aragon married to Henry 1509–1533
0 kommentar(er)
