Louyse Bourgeois

French midwife and writer

• Born: c. 1563
• Birthplace: Place unknown
• Died: December 1, 1636
• Place of death: France

Bourgeois was the first French woman to write treatises on midwifery, helping to establish the discipline of obstetrics. Her writings defined diseases and common problems associated with pregnancy and childbirth.

Early Life

Little is known about the early life of Louyse Bourgeois. The État Civil (records of residents in Paris of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) was burned during a fire that destroyed the Hôtel de Ville (Paris city hall) in 1871.

It is estimated that Bourgeois was born around 1563. Pieces of her life can be reconstructed from evidence in her writings, however. In December of 1584, Bourgeois married Martin Boursier, a barber-surgeon, after she had completed her studies in writing, reading, and needlepoint; by October, 1589, she and her husband, Martin Boursier, had three children and lived in the southern suburbs of Paris until Henry IV, king of France, captured the towns of Le Mans, Bayeux, and, temporarily, the Paris faubourgs (suburbs) on the night of October 31, 1589. In September, 1592, records place Bourgeois and her three children in Paris, while her husband was serving as a surgeon for the French army.

Bourgeois and Boursier started a legacy within their family. Future generations continued the tradition of serving the court’s medical needs. One of her daughters, Françoise, married René Chartier, a physician, who served King Henry IV. Their son, Jean Chartier, was a physician to King Louis XIII.

Major figures in Bourgeois’s life include Boursier, who trained her in medicine; physician Ambroise Paré, whose work Bourgeois studied for midwifery; and her clients in the French court, including Marie de Brabançon, the du Laurens family, and Marguerite de Chabot. Marie de Médicis , queen of France, played a significant role in the life of Bourgeois, as she was Bourgeois’s most powerful and long-lasting client. Charles Guillemeau, who ended Bourgeois’s career, is another significant person in her life.

Life’s Work

Bourgeois received the majority of her medical training through her husband. The details of her training are unclear, but her own descriptions name the works of an experienced midwife, Ambroise Paré, as her teacher. It is probable that between 1594 and 1598, Bourgeois studied directly under Paré, and she passed her official examination on November 12, 1598.

A combination of factors contributed to the appointment of Bourgeois as a royal midwife to Marie de Médicis in August, 1601. Bourgeois worked her way into the French court by her knowledge of connections between the court members and the king and queen of France. The French court was a close-knit community; through word of mouth and the help of Marie de Médicis’ ladies-in-waiting, Bourgeois was introduced to the queen, who appointed her royal midwife to the queen. Physicians also recommended Bourgeois to the queen’s court and high-ranking officials with pregnant wives. Bourgeois’s husband was known within the community of physicians, so recommendations came through him as well.

Bourgeois delivered six of the queen’s children, including the future king Louis XIII. Four of the royal births took place at the Fontainebleau; two, Chrestienne in February, 1606, and Henriette in November, 1609, were born in the Louvre, where Marie de Médicis had stayed. Bourgeois was one of the highest paid midwives in seventeenth century France. As a royal midwife, she received 600 livres for every boy born and 300 livres for every girl born. In 1608, Bourgeois received a lump sum of 6,000 livres, likely in recognition of her services to the royal family.

In 1609, Bourgeois published the first book of her three-volume treatise Observations diverses sur la sterilite’, perte de fruict, foecondite’, accouchements, et maladies des femmes, et enfants nouveaux naiz (better known as Observations diverses ), which detailed the two thousand births Bourgeois helped to deliver, deliveries assumed to have occurred between 1594 and 1598. Book 1 shows that Bourgeois had a wide range of experience in both normal and complicated childbirth. She addresses emergency births and their difficulties, and describes performing minor surgeries and autopsies resulting from childbirth. Book 2 of Observations diverses was published in 1617, followed by book 3 in 1626.

The end of Bourgeois’s career as a midwife came in June with the death of Marie de Bourbon-Montpensier, first wife of Gaston d’Orléans and sister-in-law to King Louis XIII, one of Bourgeois’s patients. Bourbon-Montpensier died on June 5, 1627, after the birth of her daughter, with a condition that modern medicine calls peritonitis. Marie de Médicis demanded an autopsy report from the court physicians on the day of the death. Five physicians and five surgeons published the report the same day. The report did not imply that Bourgeois was at fault; regardless, Apologie… contre le rapport des medecins appeared on June 8, 1627. In this rebuttal, Bourgeois argued that the autopsy commission lacked integrity and that another investigation was needed. Charles Guillemeau responded, condemning Bourgeois for incompetence.

The mutual disagreement between Bourgeois and Guillemeau makes it impossible to understand the truth behind the event. Bourgeois’s disgrace is not difficult to comprehend. Members of the French court were always changing, so the court was much different in 1627 compared to 1601. The physicians and Bourgeois’s past clients were not alive or present in court to support her. As a result, with no allies or powerful forces on her side, Bourgeois had no choice but to withdraw from the court and her position as a royal midwife.

After the death of her husband in 1632, Bourgeois spent the rest of her life putting together her last book, Recueil des secrets . This last book teaches how to heal patients using plants as remedies.

Significance

Bourgeois set the standards for midwifery in seventeenth century Europe. Her books, ideas, and techniques were influential during her time, and they helped push obstetrics into the modern age.

Bibliography

Donnison, J. Midwives and Medical Men: A History of the Struggle for the Control of Childbirth. 2d ed. London: Historical Publications, 1988. Examines the struggle between men and women for positions in midwifery, and discusses Bourgeois’s own struggle with male physicians, which she had described in her books.

Dunn, P. M. “Louise Bourgeois (1563-1636): Royal Midwife of France.” Archives of Disease in Childhood: Fetal and Neonatal Edition 89, no. 2 (March, 2004): 185-187. Presents a brief discussion of Bourgeois’s work.

Marland, Hilary, ed. The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe. New York: Routledge, 1993. This work concentrates on midwifery as a practical art and discusses the general characteristics of midwifery in early modern France and Europe.

Perkins, Wendy. Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France: Louise Bourgeois. England: University of Exeter Press, 1996. The first chapter provides a biography of Bourgeois. Succeeding chapters analyze her books in detail.

Sheridan, Bridgette Ann Majella. Childbirth, Midwifery, and Science: The Life and Work of the French Royal Midwife Louise Bourgeois (1563—1636). Ph.D. dissertation. Boston College, 2002. Examines Bourgeois’s life and work in the context of her time, with a discussion of midwifery as a science.