The King's Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray

About this book

This unorthodox biography explores the life of an extraordinary Enlightenment woman who by sheer force of character parlayed a skill in midwifery into a national institution. In 1759 in an effort to end infant mortality Louis XV commissioned Madame Anglique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray to travel throughout France teaching the art of childbirth to illiterate peasant women. For the next thirty years this royal emissary taught in nearly forty cities and reached an estimated ten thousand students. She wrote a textbook and invented a life-sized obstetrical mannequin for her demonstrations. She contributed significantly to Frances demographic upswing after 1760. Who was the woman both the private self and the pseudonymous public celebrity? Nina Rattner Gelbart reconstructs Madame du Coudrays astonishing mission through extensive research in the hundreds of letters by to and about her in provincial archives throughout France. Tracing her subjects footsteps around the country Gelbart chronicles du Coudrays battles with finance ministers village matrons local administrators and recalcitrant physicians her rises in power and falls from grace and her death at the height of the Reign of Terror. At a deeper level Gelbart recaptures du Coudrays interior journey as well by questioning and dismantling the neat paper trail that the great midwife so carefully left behind. Delightfully written this tale of a fascinating life at the end of the French Old Regime sheds new light on the histories of medicine gender society politics and culture.