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Louise (Bourgeois) Boursier (1563–1636) was royal Midwifery at the court of King Henry IV of France and the first female writer in that country to publish a medical text.Worth-Stylianou, Valerie, Les Traités d’obstétrique en langue française au seuil de la modernité: Bibliographie critique des Divers travaulx d’Euchaire Rösslin (1536) à l’Apologie de Louyse Bourgeois (1627), (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 27 Largely self-taught, she delivered babies for and offered obstetrical and gynecological services to Parisian women of all social classes before coming to serve Queen Marie de Medicis in 1601.Bourgeois writes that she “began to study Paré” after deciding to become a midwife. Paré was an obstetrical innovator and battle wound surgeon; Bourgeois does not indicate that she apprenticed under another midwife. See Bourgeois, Louise, Midwife to the Queen of France: Diverse Observations (1626 edition), ed. Alison Klairmont Lingo, trans. Stephanie O’Hara (Toronto and Tempe, AZ: Iter and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017), 234. All quotations and summaries from Bourgeois’s Observations diverses are taken from this first critical edition of the three volumes and their complete English translation, hereafter referred to as Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France. All translations of the original French in this article are by Stephanie O’Hara. Bourgeois successfully delivered Louis XIII (1601) and his five royal siblings: Elizabeth, Queen of Spain (1602); Christine Marie, Duchess of Savoy (1607); Nicolas Henri, Duke of Orléans (1607); Gaston, Duke of Orléans (1608); and Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, Queen of Scots, and Queen of Ireland (1609). In 1609, Bourgeois published the first of three successive volumes on obstetrics: Observations diverses sur la sterilité, perte de fruict, foecondite, accouchements et maladies des femmes et enfants nouveaux naiz / Amplement traictees et heureusement praticquees par L. Bourgeois dite Boursier ( Diverse observations on sterility, miscarriage, fertility childbirth, and diseases of women and newborn children amply treated and successfully practiced). Subsequent volumes were published in 1617 and 1626, also in Paris.
These publications include observation-based, innovative obstetrical protocols to manage difficult births as well as advice for pregnant and postpartum mothers and newborns. Bourgeois also offered recipes for various kinds of medications that would have been easy for a woman to make herself. The three volumes include over four dozen detailed case histories that made a substantial contribution to the emerging empiricism of seventeenth-century European science and medicine.Smith, Pamela, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Gianna Pomata, “ Praxis Historialis: The Uses of Historia in Early Modern Medicine,” in Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe, ed. Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 105–146
Overall, Bourgeois’s mission was to educate midwives so that they could become more competent at caring for women’s obstetrical and gynecological needs as well as to inform women about how to care for their bodies themselves.Klairmont Lingo, Alison, “Louise Bourgeois’s School of Learning and Action,” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 49, no. 2 (2020): 3 At a time when the best trained and most skilled midwives of Paris were competing for elite clients—who had begun to prefer male surgeons not only for difficult but also for normal birthsKlairmont Lingo, Alison, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 36, 43, 56. See also Perkins, Wendy, Midwifery and Medicine in Modern France (Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1996), 99–120; Sheridan, Bridgette, “Whither Childbearing: Gender, Status, and the Professionalization of Medicine in Early Modern France,” in Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Culture, ed. Kathleen P. Long (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 239–259; Sheridan, Bridgette, “At Birth: The Modern State, Modern Medicine, and the Royal Midwife Louise Bourgeois in Seventeenth-Century France,” in Dynamis: acta hispanica ad medicinal scientifiarumque historiam illustrandam 19 (1999), 147—Bourgeois called out midwives, surgeons, and physicians alike for their incompetence and ignorance when it came to the care of pregnant, parturient, and postpartum mothers.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 167, 178, 211–213, 299–301 Moreover, Bourgeois envisioned a collaborative rather than hierarchical relationship among trained midwives, surgeons, and physicians, one that would serve the best interests of mother and child.There are many instances where Bourgeois emphasizes the importance of collaboration in the birthing room; see for example Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 108–110, 122, and 200.
Bourgeois’s works were as popular in her day as those of male medical authors like Ambroise Paré and Jacques Guillemeau.Worth-Stylianou, Les Traités d’obstétrique, 259 Even after her death she enjoyed fame and influence in France and beyond. Her work is reflected in Jane Sharp's The Midwives Book: Or the Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (1671); Marguerite du Tertre de la Marche's Instruction familière et utile aux sages-femmes pour bien pratiquer les accouchemens (1677); and Justine Siegemund's Die chur-Brandeburgische Hoff-Wehe-Mutter (1690).Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 47 Also following Bourgeois's example was Angélique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray (c. 1712–1794); it is unknown whether du Coudray was related to Bourgeois.Gelbart, Nina, The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 20
Bourgeois's career as a royal court midwife spanned more than twenty-six years. She was paid 900 livres for each of the last four of Louis XIII's siblings' births, a sum eight times greater than the average municipal midwife's salary.Gélis, Jacques, La sage femme ou le médecin: une nouvelle conception de la vie (Paris: Fayard, 1988), 23, 26–37 In 1608, she received an additional sum of 6000 livres, most likely in recognition of her superior services to the royal family.Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine, 23–24 After the birth of Marie de Médicis’s last child in 1609, Bourgeois asked for a pension. King Henry IV agreed to 900 livres, which was considered a reasonable retirement income.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 43
In 1584, Bourgeois married Martin Boursier, a barber–surgeon who had lived and worked for twenty years with the obstetrical and surgical innovator Ambroise Paré.Chereau, Achille, Esquisse historique sur Louise Bourgeois, dite Boursier, sage- femme de la reine Marie de Médicis (Paris: Malteste, 1852), 8, 8n1 The couple had a comfortable life until the dynastic and religious wars that had wracked France for over thirty years came to the quiet suburb.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 233 In 1589, while her husband was away with the army, troops destroyed Bourgeois’s ancestral home and others like it. She escaped with her three children and mother by fleeing inside the Paris city walls.
Bourgeois wrote that to make ends meet she sold the furniture and other objects she had salvaged from her home as well as items she had embroidered.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 233 Life was difficult while her husband was at the front lines, but their financial circumstances did not improve after he returned in late 1593 or early 1594.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 33; Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine, 16–17, 146n8 Bourgeois recounts that because she could read and had a surgeon for a husband, "A respectable woman that who had delivered me of my three children and who liked me persuaded me to learn how to be a midwife."Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 234 Initially, Bourgeois writes, "I could not bring myself to become when I thought of the responsibility taking children to be baptized. … In the end … fear of seeing my children go hungry made me do it."Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 234. Ecclesiastical and secular legislation required that midwives be able to perform an emergency baptism if a priest was unavailable when a newborn was soon to die. Traditionally, midwives also brought a newborn to church for official baptism while the mother was still convalescing and considered “impure”; see Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 18–27
Paré also emphasized the importance of learning human anatomy by performing dissections, a part of medical and surgical training to which most midwives never had access.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 35 However, Bourgeois had a friendship with the head midwife at Paris’s Hôtel-Dieu (poor hospital); she allowed Bourgeois to witness both deliveries of infants and autopsies of women who had died in childbirth.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 222 These experiences contributed to her knowledge of female anatomy and the skills required to deliver a baby safely. At the time, the Hôtel-Dieu was the only institution in Paris where women could obtain formal training in midwifery.Petrelli, Richard L., “The Regulation of French Midwifery during the Ancien Régime,” in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 26, no. 3 (1971): 279 But apprenticeships were limited: only four interns were accepted every three months.Wickersheimer, Ernest, La Médecine en France à l’époque de la Renaissance (Paris: Maloine, 1906), 189; Carrier, Henriette, Origines de la maternité de Paris: les maîtresses sages-femmes et l’office des accouchées de l’ancien Hôtel-Dieu (1378–1796) (Paris: Steinheil, 1888), 78–79
Bourgeois recounts that her first client was her porter’s wife.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 234 Following this first delivery, she became "quite busy among the poor and other kinds of people."Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 234 In 1598, Bourgeois went before the official medical licensing board to receive a midwifery license.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 22–27; Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 277–279 The board consisted of two senior midwives, a physician, and two surgeons.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 235 Madame Dupuis, one of the two senior midwives, was royal midwife in the court of Henri IV. Dupuis objected to Bourgeois’s obtaining a license because she was married to a surgeon. At the time, Parisian surgeons were competing with midwives for the most elite clients.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 36, 36n179 Bourgeois claims that Dupuis remarked: "My heart tells me this doesn’t bode well for us."Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 235 Bourgeois adds that Dupuis kept her for a long time and threatened to have her burned at the stake if she tried to compete with Dupuis. Despite Dupuis’s concerns, the other members of the board allowed Bourgeois to receive her license and become a sworn midwife. Statuts et reiglemens ordonnez pour toutes les matronnes ou saiges femmes de la ville, prévosté et vicomté de Paris & reiglement pour les Sages Femmes (Paris, 1587)
In 1601, Bourgeois learned that Henri IV’s new queen, Marie de' Medicis, was pregnant and did not find Madame Dupuis, the royal midwife, "agreeable."Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 238 Contemplating the grief that Madame Dupuis had given her at the licensing board examination, Bourgeois confessed, “I too would have wanted another woman."Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 238 With the help of neighbors, friends, former clients, and royal physicians as well as the queen’s own ladies-in-waiting and their servants, Bourgeois created an elaborate scheme to supplant Dupuis.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 39. To learn more about Bourgeois’s scheme see Bar-on, Yarrah, “Neighbours and Gossip in Early Modern Gynaecology,” in Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine: Mediating Medicine in Early Modern and Modern Europe, ed. Willem de Blécourt and Cornélie Usborne (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 36–55. Also see Sheridan, Bridgette A., “Patronage and the Power of the Pen: The Making of the French Royal Midwife Louise Bourgeois,” in Early Modern Women 13, no. 1 (September 2018): 58–80 While Bourgeois could not find a way to meet privately with the queen, she was able to gain the queen’s attention for a moment at a large banquet at the House of Gondi where the royal couple dined once or twice a week.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 241 At just the right moment, Bourgeois’s allies directed the queen to observe Bourgeois from afar. Impressed with her calm demeanor and upright stance—characteristics that in Bourgeois’s era connoted moral and physical strength,McTavish, Lianne, Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 94–95 the queen declared that she wanted no other midwife to ever touch her.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 243
The second volume of Observations diverses, first published in 1617, has medical advice as well as autobiographical and historical materials. The volume includes "Advice to My Daughter," a didactic essay on the pitfalls of practicing midwifery. It is, as far as we know, the first text of its kind written by a midwife—a tradeswoman—to her daughter.Winn, Colette H, "De sage(-)femme a sage(-)fille: Louise Boursier, Instruction à ma fille (1626)," in Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature 24, no. 46 (1997): 62 The essay outlines religious and moral guidance regarding such topics as abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and female modesty; it also describes how a midwife might avoid being blamed for unsuccessful deliveries. The second volume includes, in addition, “How I Learned the Art of Midwifery”—a brief autobiographical sketch that has become source material for almost all secondary accounts of Bourgeois’s life. A third essay, "The True Account of the Births of My Lords and Ladies the Children of France with the Noteworthy Particularities Thereof,” incorporates a dramatization of the birth of the future Louis XIII. The queen’s first pregnancy took place at a time when France was in desperate need of a direct male heir to the throne; the lack of an heir had exacerbated the dynastic and religious wars of the prior thirty years.Worth-Stylianou, Valerie, "La Théâtralisation de la naissance du dauphin (1601) chez Louise Bourgeois, sage- femme de Marie de Médicis," in Le "Théâtral" de la France d'Ancien Régime, ed. S. Chaouche (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010), 141
Bourgeois's narrative of the birth of the future Louis XIII displays her knowledge of and playful attitude toward the critical importance that the Bourbon royals placed in having a male heir.Reed, Kirk D., Birthing Bodies in Early France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011) This attitude, of course, could only be exhibited after the actual birth of the future king. In her dramatization of his birth, Bourgeois exhibited a carnivalesque interpretation of this key event by implying that she could control the sex of the unborn child just before its delivery, a commonly held notion of her era.Tucker, Holly, Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France (Detroit, IL: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 55–56 She went on to claim that she set Henri IV on an emotional roller coaster by not revealing the child’s sex immediately after it was born.Morwiche, Pascale, Donner vie au royaume. Grossesses et maternités à la Cour, XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2022), 251 She created narrative tension by describing at length how distraught the king and his courtiers were—until Bourgeois unveiled the naked child.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 255 In this narrative, Bourgeois also underplayed whatever part the attending royal physicians and surgeons had at the event; she barely mentions them.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 250–257; Worth-Stylianou, "La Théâtralisation de la naissance du dauphin (1601)," 137–154
In her narratives of the subsequent births of the future Louis XIII’s five siblings, Bourgeois supplied intimate details about the queen’s labor and relays the royals’ concerns about finding appropriate wet nurses; she also described where the births took place; exchanges between the queen and others attending her; and the queen’s awarding Bourgeois a special velvet cap. Of this last event, she boasted, "Formerly, royal midwives wore velvet neckpieces and a thick gold chain around their neck. … I have the honor that no other woman except for me has touched the queen during her deliveries and afterwards."Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 260-261 These narratives provide a unique account of royal births that emphasize not only Bourgeois’s obstetrical prowess but also her perspective on the court's internal workings at a critical moment in French history.
In the second volume, Bourgeois told her readers that that she wanted to "revise and enlarge the previous volume" including a long chapter on diseases of the womb.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 195 In addition, she created a mythological genealogy of her ascent to the position of royal midwife, and she included her daughter in that genealogy. Bourgeois traced her ancestry to Phaenarete, a midwife and the mother of Socrates, who, Bourgeois asserted, adopted her. Upon this adoption, Bourgeois further claimed, the ancient goddess of childbirth Lucina became jealous of Phaenarete. To demonstrate her allegiance to Bourgeois, Lucina then ordered Mercury to guide Bourgeois to the palace, where she became royal midwife.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 8n33 Creating genealogies of this kind to defend and assert one’s personal and professional authority was a commonplace practice among male and female authors during this period. Also in this volume, Bourgeois discussed how to choose wet nurses and presented a series of unusual case histories.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 218-220
The third volume, published in 1626, was the briefest; it contains case histories that emphasize the importance of orally transmitted knowledge, and Bourgeois wrote of her growing concern about incompetent physicians who advise women without really understanding the signs of or other aspects of pregnancy.
In response to this implicit attack upon her competency, Bourgeois wrote a brief pamphlet, Fidelle relation de l’accouchement, maladie et ouverture du corps de feu Madame, in which she defended herself.Bourgeois, Louise, Fidelle relation de l’accouchement, maladie et ouverture du corps de feu Madame (Paris: 1627); in Louise Bourgeois, Récit véritable, 100–104 She highlighted her many qualifications; cited her practice as a midwife for thirty-four years; and noted that she had honorably acquired the proper license and had written books on midwifery that were used by physicians in England and Germany.Bourgeois, Fidelle relation, 107 More specifically, she asserted that she carried out the delivery of the placenta properly. Even if small pieces of placenta remained, she insisted, they would have been flushed out by the lochia as the ancient Greek surgeon Paulus Aeginata and her own contemporary, the anatomist Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente (1565–1613), had discussed in their writings.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 45 However, the self-defense did not persuade her detractors. With all of her allies at court deceased, the scandal most likely ended her career as royal midwife.Sheridan, “At Birth,” 165–66; McTavish, Childbirth, 164–165
One year before her death, and only because of the persistent urging of her publisher, Bourgeois published Recueil de secrets, a book of remedies. Her reluctance to publish stemmed from her concern about including recipes for certain remedies that she had been keeping secret in order to pass them on to her daughter, Antoinette, who was also a midwife. The publisher wrote, "The only thing that kept her from bowing to my prayers for a long time was the consideration of her daughter, who had embraced her profession, which she feared to harm. Finally recognizing that she had acquired by her skill and great judgment, such a reputation, that she her was henceforth quite recommendable in herself, without her needing to be so by her mother’s secrets, gave me this manuscript."Publisher’s Note to Reader in Louise Bourgeois, Recueil de secrets (Paris: Mondiere, 1635), trans. Alison Klairmont Lingo, aii v–aiii r
Bourgeois died on 20 December 1636. She was buried with her ancestors, who lived outside of Paris, rather than with her husband, whose grave was in the city.Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine, 26, 149nn33–34
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