Most women in eighteenth-century Europe gave birth to at least five or six children over their lifetimes. They were assisted in the arduous, often dangerous process of childbirth by friends, relatives, and, in many cases, professional midwives. Birth took place at home, sometimes with the aid of a birthing chair, such as the folding chair from Sicily shown here.

The training and competency of midwives were often rudimentary, especially in the countryside. Enlightenment interest in education and public health helped inspire a movement across Europe to raise standards. One of its pioneers was Madame Angelique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray. Du Coudray herself had undergone a rigorous three-year apprenticeship and was a member of the Parisian surgeons’ guild. She set off on a mission to teach rural midwives in the French province of Auvergne.

Du Coudray saw that her unlettered pupils learned through the senses, not through books. Thus she made, possibly for the first time in history, a life-size obstetrical model — a “machine” — out of fabric and stuffing for use in her classes. “I had … the students maneuver in front of me on a machine … which represented the pelvis of a woman, the womb, its opening, its ligaments, the conduit called the vagina, the bladder, and rectum intestine. I added [an artificial] child of natural size, whose joints were flexible enough to be able to be put in different positions.”* Now du Coudray could demonstrate the problems of childbirth, and each student could practice on the model in the “lab session.”

As her reputation grew, du Coudray sought to reach a national audience. In 1757 she published her Manual on the Art of Childbirth. The Manual incorporated her hands-on teaching method and served as a reference for students and graduates. In 1759 the government authorized du Coudray to carry her instruction “throughout the realm” and promised financial support.

Her classes brought women from surrounding villages to meet mornings and afternoons six days a week, with ample time to practice on the mannequin. After two to three months of instruction, Madame du Coudray and her entourage moved on. Teaching thousands of midwives, Madame du Coudray and her model may well have contributed to the decline in infant mortality and to the increase in population occurring in France in the eighteenth century — an increase she and her royal supporters fervently desired. Certainly she spread better knowledge about childbirth from the educated elite to the common people.

*Quotes are from Nina Gelbart, The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 60–61.

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