The medical knowledge of the unborn child remains ambiguous before the 1960s.
Even in 1694 scientists articulated that the unborn child was at the top of sperm, which was the typical medical idea from the Essay de Diotrique by Nicolas Hartsoeker (Hrdy, 2004 范絢譯：83). The modern application of ultrasound scanning started about the 1960s when the English doctor Ian Donald applied the ultrasound technology to diagnose a patient’s huge and easily removable tumor successfully (Donald, 1958). And later this technology was applied to the measurement of fetal head (Steiner, 1982：1590).
If we trace the medical knowledge about the unborn child, we could find a famous embryo painting inside the womb which was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). It was considered to be the very first in history to depict the human fetus lying inside the uterus. His painting was finished around 1510-1512 and there was about five hundred years ago. With acquaintance of an anatomist Marcantonio della Torre (1481-1511), Leonardo da Vinci gained the basic medical knowledge about the embryo. Within tradition of the rise of university, the Salerno medical school established by Benedictus monastery in Italy had been one of the oldest universities in medieval Europe. And the anatomy is the basic medical course and knowledge in medical education at that time. Without surprising, Salerno medical school had been regarded as the “city of Hippocrates” where the medical education of anatomy and surgery were expounded and developed in the twelfth century. “This mew knowledge burst out the bounds of Cathedral and monastery schools and created the learned professions…from Paris and Bologna those academic gilds which have given us our first and best definition of a university, a society of masters and scholars…”.
(Haskins, 1957：5-6) The more scientific investigation of anatomy and physiology in the fifteenth century was included the publication of De humani corporis fabrica (1543) by the Paduan professor Andreas Vesaliusand Wiiliam Harvey’s De motucordis (1628) which demonstrated the physiological inquiry and the circulation of the blood, the role of the heart (Porter, 1999: 10).
Furthermore, through the perspectives of medical history Doctor Joan Lane would provide us an outline of development of medical knowledge. Her outstanding books:
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A Social History of Medicine (2001) and Apprenticeship in England 1600-1914 (1996) would help us to depict the clear historical perspectives of medical sociology. The development of anatomy helped the development of medicine. The operation of anatomy and medicine were linked with the apprenticeship. The Statute of Artificers (1563) laid down the basic condition of apprenticeship and the Elizabethan Poor Law Act (1601) concerned the indenturing of the poor children (Lane, 1996：3-4).
Apprenticeship mainly provided the entrance of ‘brotherhood in cities’. It was also an opportunity of receiving education for the craft career for the poor and the working class, even in time of Shakespeare (Nicoll, 1976：67). This question manifests the controversial key-point of the issue of demography among the inquiries of economic development.
We may also need to explore and enlarge our understandings that the modern genetics truly indebt to the Czech Catholic Augustinian priest Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884), the founder of modern genetics. His task of scientific experiment on pea plants at his monastery garden open the door of modern genetics. His short paper
‘Experiment on Plants Hybrids’ had announced the discovery of important fact of the law of inheritance. In 1865 when he presented his result at a local natural history society in two lectures and a year later published it at the journal, the scientific world failed to recognize this monumental finding during his life time (Le Grand, 1990).
The knowledge of embryology may be traced to Fabricius of Aquapendente, the professor of William Harvey (1578-1657) at the University of Padua in Italy. In addition to the circulation of bloods, Harvey made many embryological theories and concluded that embryos were secreted by the uterus. Marcello Malpighi observed the early hen’s embryo. He thought that the egg contained the mini chick in 1675. (Moore, 2008:11). Regenier de Graaf (1641-1673), the Dutch physician, observed the chambers of rabbit and clarified that the embryos could not have been secreted by the uterus. And the chambers were blastocysts and the mature female ovarian follicles were called graafian follicles in memory of his significant discovery. Johan Ham van Arnheim and Anthony van Leeuwenhoek used the microscope in 1677 and provided us a remarkable observation of microscope of spermatozoa (Loudon, 1997: 9).
Although he misunderstood that the sperm contained a miniature performed human beings which would be enlarged while it was deposited at female genital tract. Karl Earnest von Baer (1792-1876) led to the understanding of oocyte in the ovarian follicles of a dog in 1827. He also contributed to the knowledge of origins and tissues of embryonic development and regarded as the father of modern embryology. (Moore, Persaud, Torchia, 2015).
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Hippocrates (c. 460-377 BC) is regarded as the Father of Medicine. His watchword is “Back to Nature”. He attributes the physician as an independent standing point of seeing clearly, that is of clinical observation. To him disease is essentially a process.
The treatment is “giving the Nature a chance” (Galen, Introduction: x-xii). The works of Hippocrates now called Hippocratic Corpus is ascribed to him and gathered around 250 BC in the library at Alexandria. His main authentic articulation is acknowledged that the medicine needed to be an understanding, empirical and rational workings of the body in its natural environment. Health is the equilibrium and illness the stability yet change-ability of nature. The human body is pictured in perpetual flux and health is a matter of keeping it within the bounds until the illness subverted (Porter, 1999：
56). Furthermore, the patient-centered is also first identified in Hippocratic Corpus and a trust-based clinical relations is encouraged as “Make frequent visit; be especially careful in your examination, counteracting the things wherein you have been deceived at changes.” (Porter, 1999：58). The preferred treatment regarding the unborn child is the attitude of protection in the Hippocratic Oath which is the paradigm of profession of the doctor as a morally self-regulating discipline. The wording is addressed as “I swear by Apollo the healer, by Aesculapius, by Health and all the powers of healing, and the call to witness all the gods and goddesses that I may keep this Oath and Promise to the best of my ability and judgment…I will not give a fatal draught to anyone if I am asked, nor will I suggest any such thing. Neither will I give a woman means to procure an abortion.” (Porter, 1999：62-63).
The Greek physician Soranus was born around the second half of the first century and the second century. He wrote the famous medical textbook Gynecology which content covered from the field of biology to medical science. Soranus studied medical science at Alexandria which was the medical center and formed the Alexandria school.
He had been to Rome to practice medicine at the time of Emperor Trajan (18-117 A.
D.) and Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) Soranus had mentioned the concept of soul as the corporeal substance, the church fathers, Tertullian and St. Augustine esteemed him highly (Soranus, Owsei Temkin, 1956: Introduction xxiv). Many basic topics of pregnancy were compiled in Gynecology, such as the sign of conception, whether the fetus was male or female, what were the signs of impending abortion. Basically, this book seemed to be written both for medical professionals and laymen. It took the position between “according to nature (kata physin)” and “contrary to nature (para physin)”. What is important part at this textbook related to the unborn child was the chapter “What grows inside the uterus of the pregnant woman” (Soranus, Owsei Temkin, 1956: Introduction xxxviii).
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Another Greek physician Galen (130-200 A.D.) who was born in Pergamon reminded some certain drugs could “destroy the embryo or rupture certain of its membranes” and lead to an abortion. (Gorman, 1982：16)
In order to avoid the term debating as well as to define the critical term usage, human dignity may properly refer to the reasonable discussion of the reality. Since the concept of human rights would demand the basic citizenship within the domains of institutional settings in modern states. In theory and practice, citizenship requires of official relationship between the state and the individual (Isin, Nyers, and Tuner, 2013). The concept of human dignity could not be fully interpreted the development of population policy of a modern state from one aspect (McLaren, 1984). Moreover, the demographic transition model is deeply linked with theorizing of modernization and urbanization in the early twentieth century (Kraly, 1998). Furthermore, the human rights are the meta norm which is complex within the international politics (Risse, 1999; Sikkink, 1998).