Whether despite or because of a belief in women’s inferior status, the practice of midwifery was governed almost entirely by women when "Aristotle’s Masterpiece" was first published – but this was starting to change. In the past, “was a largely female affair” – not even the husband or male physicians were present unless the mother, child, or both were dead or dying. This meant that a male physician’s presence was generally “dreaded” during a birth. Yet “[male medical writers increasing interest in gynecological issues” and their “greater access to learned medicine and Latin texts gave them increasing authority over conditions that afflicted women.” Men also began to write more about obstetrics and they started to develop tools, such as forceps, to help them during deliveries. Although male physicians and “educated urban female midwives [… both read the same books and had the same concepts of anatomy and the birth process,” women were not allowed to use the tools developed to help during births and they were “excluded” from the “dissections and anatomical classes” that improved male physicians’ training. In the seventeenth century, male midwives were popularized among wealthier families in France and, by the eighteenth century, they became popular in England. This change was accomplished through “a process of professionalization in which male practitioners asserted their authority over midwifery by virtue of their formal medical training.” It was also affirmed by an influx of new midwifery texts authored by men.