This paper examines gender in the interplay of practice, knowledge production and device in medicine in Sweden between approximately 1870 and 1914 by looking at medical trade catalogues and trade journals. Studying this relationship aims to locate where women are through the examination of technologies and knowledge, and scrutinize the boundaries of gendered space. Exploring changes in surgical practice, such as the growing use of antiseptics and aseptics in relation to the opening of the abdomen, and the proliferation of technological developments in order to accommodate them pin-points gendered divisions from production-market-user-patient. For example, a Swedish medical trade catalogue from 1890 categorizes instruments under the headings “women’s illnesses” (kvinnosjukdomar) and childbirth, dedicating a great deal of space for them; whereas, other gendered instruments are not categorized as such. Others offer portraits of their staff, women sitting alongside men, some at sales counters, and some in workshops. In journals, they are represented as patients in case studies, or in relation to new practical developments in treating the many illnesses attributed to women. Medical trade catalogues remain an understudied resource, and this study offers new ways of locating women in Swedish medical history beyond examination of pioneers, midwives, and so-called wise women and quacks: studies which have been undertaken by a number of scholars. Locating women in this way lifts not only their presence, but aims to further understand the demarcations of gendered space relating to knowledge production, practice and technology.
