Louise (Bourgeois) Boursier (1563–1636) was a French midwife and medical writer who served as a royal midwife at the courts of Henry IV and Louis XIII. Largely self-taught, she became a licensed midwife in Paris in 1598 and was appointed midwife to Queen Marie de' Medici in 1601. Over the next eight years, Bourgeois attended the births of the queen's six children, including the future Louis XIII. She remained a royal court midwife for 26 years.
In 1609, Bourgeois published the first volume of Observations diverses sur la sterilité, perte de fruict, foecondité, accouchements et maladies des femmes et enfants nouveaux naiz, the first book on obstetrics published by a woman. Two further volumes appeared in 1617 and 1626. Drawing on her experience attending births, Bourgeois combined medical instruction with detailed case histories, autobiography, and advice for midwives and women. Her writings addressed pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum care, diseases of women and newborns, and difficult deliveries. She emphasized knowledge gained through observation and practice while also drawing on established medical learning.
Bourgeois wrote for midwives, other medical practitioners, and women themselves. She criticized inadequate knowledge and practice among midwives, surgeons, and physicians, and emphasized learning through exchanges among practitioners. Her works circulated beyond France and were translated into English, German, and Dutch. Early life Bourgeois was born into a wealthy, propertied family in 1563 in Faubourg Saint-Germain, an upper-class suburb just outside of Paris. Bourgeois wrote, "Not for anything would we have traded our house for a beautiful one in the city, because … we had everything that those who lived in the city had, plus good air and the freedom of beautiful places to walk."
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. 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 is, an unlicensed midwife] 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 a midwife] when I thought of the [responsibility of] taking children to be baptized. … In the end … fear of seeing my children go hungry made me do it."
Education Unlike the majority of practicing midwives, Bourgeois did not learn midwifery by apprenticing to a more experienced midwife nor does she acknowledge that her husband instructed her. Instead, she recounts that she read the work of Ambroise Paré who, by 1593 or 1594 when Bourgeois decided to become a midwife, was deceased (he died in 1590). In Paré’s writing, Bourgeois would have found instructions on how to perform an obstetrical technique called podalic version that he reintroduced into medical practice; the technique allows a birth attendant to deliver a malpresenting infant feet first.O'Dowd, Michael J., and Philipp, Elliot E., The History of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2nd ed. (New York: Parthenon Publishing, 2000), 150 This procedure obviated the need to use hooks or other sharp instruments to extract an impacted fetus, a procedure that killed the fetus and sometimes mortally harmed the mother.
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
Licensing 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)
Career
Bourgeois recounts that her first client was her porter’s wife. 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 1601, three years after receiving her midwifery license, Bourgeois learned that Marie de' Medici, the new queen of France and wife of Henry IV, was pregnant and did not find Madame Dupuis, the royal midwife, "agreeable."Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 238 Remembering the difficulties Dupuis had caused her during her licensing 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, royal physicians, and members of the queen's household, Bourgeois devised a campaign to replace 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 Although she could not arrange a private meeting with the queen, her supporters drew Marie de' Medici's attention to her during a banquet at the House of Gondi, where the royal couple dined once or twice a week.Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 241 Impressed by Bourgeois's calm demeanor and upright bearing, qualities associated at the time with 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
In 1601, Bourgeois delivered Louis XIII, the future king of France. He was the first of six children of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV whose births she attended. She subsequently delivered Elisabeth, the future queen of Spain, in 1602; Christine Marie, the future duchess of Savoy, and Nicolas Henri, the future duke of Orléans, in 1607; Gaston, the future duke of Orléans, in 1608; and Henrietta Maria, the future queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in 1609.
Bourgeois was paid 900 livres for each of the last four royal births, eight times the average salary of a municipal midwife.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 6,000 livres, most likely in recognition of her services to the royal family.Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine, 23–24 The following year, after the queen's sixth and final childbirth, Bourgeois requested a pension. Henry IV granted her an annual pension of 900 livres, an amount considered sufficient for retirement.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 43
Bourgeois served as a royal court midwife for 26 years. In 1627, Marie de Bourbon, Duchess of Montpensier, the wife of Gaston and sister-in-law of Louis XIII, died following a difficult childbirth attended by Bourgeois. An autopsy was performed, and the resulting report stated that pieces of the placenta had remained in the uterus.“Rapport,” the autopsy report, appears at the end of Appendix I in the French critical edition; Bourgeois, Louise, Récit véritable de la naissance de Messeigneurs et Dames les enfans de France. Instruction à ma fille et autres textes, ed. François Rouget and Colette Winn (Geneva: Droz, 2000), 108–109
Bourgeois responded to the report in the 1627 pamphlet Apologie de Louyse Bourgeois dite Bourcier, Sage femme de la Royne mere du Roy, & de feu Madame. Contre le rapport des medecins, in which she defended her conduct and professional competence.Bourgeois, Louise, Apologie de Louyse Bourgeois dite Bourcier, Sage femme de la Royne mere du Roy, & de feu Madame. Contre le rapport des medecins (Paris: Mondiere, 1627) She emphasized her qualifications, cited her 34 years of practice as a midwife, and noted that she had obtained the required license and written books on midwifery that were used by physicians in England and Germany.Bourgeois, Fidelle relation, 107 She maintained that she had delivered the placenta properly and argued that any small pieces remaining would have been expelled with the lochia, citing the ancient Greek physician Paul of Aegina and the Italian anatomist Hieronymus Fabricius.Klairmont Lingo, Editor’s Introduction to Bourgeois, Midwife to the Queen of France, 45 The dispute damaged Bourgeois's position at court, and she left royal service after the controversy.Sheridan, “At Birth,” 165–66; McTavish, Childbirth, 164–165 Writing Overview