La "Machine" de Madame du Coudray: More Babies for France
Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 10:36PM
Madame du Coudray was eighteenth-century midwife that dedicated her life to educating midwives throughout France. After ten years as a midwife in Paris, Madame du Coudray was hired in 1759 by Louis XV to travel throughout France with a goal of curbing infant mortality to boost the declining French population. Instead of creating more surgeons, the king decided that midwives should be better trained and appointed Madame du Coudray to the unusual, highly political and well-paid position of national midwife.
Du Coudray is known for presenting her theories on birth to rural French midwives, using the “machine,” a model of a pelvis with accompanying fetus and placenta to demonstrate the mechanics of birth attendant techniques. She is credited with having promoted a shift from traditional French midwifery, which emphasized the health of the mother, to the technology-as-progress medical model of childbirth that emphasized the baby as a product and a boon to the population.
The only remaining “machine” is from 1778 and is displayed in Le musée Flaubert et d’histoire de la medicine in Rouen, France.
Cassidy, T., (2007). Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born
The king’s midwife: a history and mystery of Madame du Coudray - Reviewed by Ann F. La Berge. (2007). Retrieved August 20, 2009, from PubMed Central Medical History: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=1044340&pageindex=1
Reader Comments (19)
The baby-as-product line of thinking has caught my attention recently. Our midwife told us, after the HBAC, about the registration process for the birth of our child. She mentioned that in Australia, when a newborn is registered, it is automatically added as an asset to the country, as in, the baby's lifetime tax contribution is estimated and added as a financial boost. Well I don't know if this is done in Illinois where I was born, but it explains a lot to think that the one of the reasons that maternal care is so shoddy, is that institutions and individuals receiving state money are protecting the future financial interests of the state by attempting to deliver live babies at whatever the (maternal) cost. This may not be the case in the US, but it wouldn't surprise me if every little John and Jane comes with an increasing tax tag depending on the year of their birth. This would also partially explain the numerous reports of women who have refused treatment, who were subsequently battered in the name of the health of their baby at the hands of angry attendants.
Anon, I should probably know this but is Australia's population decreasing?
That's neat that instead of making birth the purview of doctors, midwifery was boosted.
In response to the line of thinking by your first commenter, I've heard that Australia pays a credit of some sort to parents who have a child -- I presume to increase population. I don't know if that means that the population is already decreasing, or if this is just an attempt to ward off that possibility. [The context in which I read it was, that parents are paid this money if they have a live birth or a fetal death after a certain gestational age. Apparently a late-term abortion is counted as a fetal death, so women can get pregnant and have an abortion at 30 weeks or something and still get the $3000 or whatever. They were attempting to close that loophole when I read the article, which is probably a couple of years ago, so that info may be a little old.] I do know that many European countries are experiencing population declines -- or they would be except for immigrant Muslim population expansion. A couple of interesting things about Europe I've read just in the past week or so is that 6 of the 7 most popular baby names in one country are Muslim; and a minority of schoolchildren in London have English as their first language. This is due to the double-whammy of reduced births among the ethnic English, Dutch, Italian, etc., and the increase of foreign-born population and their tendency to have large families.
That is AWESOME. I am so glad one survived!
Wow, they had it right...wish someone would step up like that now.
Du Coudray's work sounds like it was a mixed bag. Here's an excerpt from the review quoted:
In spite of her accomplishments, du Coudray is no feminist hero. She was not an advocate for females. She did not emphasize her gender, but rather assumed she was the equal of males. She accepted the status quo and worked within the system, all the while seeing herself as a man of action. A vehicle of science and progress, du Coudray presented herself as an expert authority. Gelbart portrays her as a woman in charge, planning her strategy, charting her career trajectory. She was an exceptional woman, in no way representative of ordinary women. Given her attitude, skills, and her system of patronage, du Coudray defied the marginalization of women which was taking place in midwifery circles.
When du Coudray and her entourage arrived in a town, she sometimes aroused resistance from local authorities and midwives. She was an outsider, a medical colonizer, interfering with established childbirthing practices, which had been passed down from generation to generation and whose practitioners inspired confidence in local women. She medicalized and mechanized birth, referring to the mother as "the patient", and employing her "machine" as her principal teaching aid. Gelbart portrays du Coudray's mission as an infusion of modernity into a pre-modern world of stories. Du Coudray was an expert, disseminating modernization throughout the provinces.
Du Coudray exemplifies the technocratic approach of the French Enlightenment which included the central government's goal of uniformity of procedures and government training in the name of science, technology, progress, and national security. Midwifery was for her a state affair. In her teaching she privileged the technical, referring to her mannequin as the "machine". An entrepreneur, she emphasized the baby as the "product", a departure from typical early modern French childbirthing practices which stressed the welfare of the mother over the baby. Her aim was to produce babies for France "like a cobbler makes shoes" (p. 113).
Kathy,
Interesting! Sounds like the immigrant population is keeping European populations from declining. This was a funny (paraphrased) line from the article-- "the increase of foreign-born population and their tendency to have large families." I know what you're talking about-- sometimes articles sound like they're written by someone's grandpa complaining about all them dern ferners with their big families. It's even funnier when xenophobic gramps is from a family of 10.
That's my kind of birth machine!
I'm loving the fetal muppets she used. Amazing how they maintain a very French facial expression.
RR, you are killing me! New on Sesame Street: Cletus the Muppet Fetus.
In Canada, if it weren't for our immigrant population it would be declining. I am becoming more and more aware that I am soon going to be the minority. Maybe if we had a better maternity system, more women wouldn't be so afraid of having babies. But when they only show terrifying births on TV, of course women who haven't been told otherwise from their grandparents or parents, are not going to willingly have babies.
This is really interesting and I am glad the King employed a midwife, but I don't like how she called her dummy the "machine" and that the baby is a "product" of birth. WHat about the mother? Is this where the medicalisation of childbirth, and the modernization of childbirth began? So far those 2 things haven't really improved things for women now. Birth is over medicalized and the maternal and infant mortality rate is starting to increase in North America due the increased use of unnecessary interventions.
"Birth is over medicalized and the maternal and infant mortality rate is starting to increase in North America due the increased use of unnecessary interventions."
That's an interesting theory. Anything to back it up? I'm intrigued.
I especially love the frilly sleeves on the illustrations!
I think the "machine" is cool, but am I the only one sad that the "mom" part of it is in stirrups? I mean, I guess it doesn't even really need legs, just the womb, vagina, pelvis, and baby....so I'm wondering if the legs and stirrups were included just to make it seem the most lifelike. Which is a little disappointing if this was the "norm" for midwives back then.
Wow, my screen just got a nice coffee cleanse thanks to "Cletus the Muppet Fetus". I may have to bill you for a new keyboard.
I think these are such a great piece of midwifery history! I particularly love the placenta in the last picture. It looks like something you could find a pattern for in Stitch & Bitch. Any knitting experts out there, or crafty babes in general, want to take it on? I would TOTALLY let my kids play with a pretend pregnant belly with all its attending parts.
Am I a freak for thinking that? I know I totally played pregnancy and birth all the time when I was a kid - why not use some plush-yet-accurately-representational toys? (What would the people who flipped out over Baby Gloton think of me for that??)
Rixa- The main problem with maternity care today is that birth attendants refuse to wear frilly sleeves. It's outrageous, really.
Jill- If I have this cup of coffee, I might remember the source of the story that Louis XIV was a voyeur and "invented" the lithotomy position so he could watch his babies being born. Based on the accounts of du Coudray, she brought a standardized, medical model of birth to the midwives of the French countryside. If the king said lithotomy, lithotomy it was.
Dou-la-la- I am not what one might call the crafty type unless you count digital placentas (see sidebar) but isn't there a blog of things you shouldn't knit or crochet? I'd bet placenta is on there. I think Rixa posted those cool handmade mother-baby dolls awhile ago.
Again, a nip of afternoon coffee is a must. If you'll excuse me...
Jill- I did a quick search and it looks like the Aussie population is on the increase. The baby bonus that Kathy is talking about is still in effect. In 2007 it was $4000 AU in a lump sum payment per child, and in 2009 it's $5000 per child but paid in installments to make sure us crazy folk don't go having babies in order to buy cars, or drugs, or other such nonsense. I don't know if it's paid out for stillbirths (or abortions). The bonus is given in part because taxes over her are 30%, and there are no breaks for families unless they are under the income threshold, and even then the taxes are still automatically deducted and the funds are paid out via Family Assistance.
I've only been over here for 3 years so I'm still working the ropes out. DH is in academia and we went international for this position. It's definitely better than slaving for a US uni. for peanuts.
I didn't even know that midwives still existed outside of novels until we moved here, much less that they hold nursing degrees. I can only credit the substandard care we received in our hospital experience for opening my eyes. If they successfully outlaw homebirths here, my guess is that it will stay that way until a critical mass of severely dissatisfied families is reached, which holds enough voter clout for the pols. to have to either bend or be tossed out. The big "Mother of All Rallies" is being held in Canberra on Sept. 7 to support homebirths and private midwifery. I hope it makes a difference.
Sounds... creepy to me. I have to say, though, I'm no fonder of the idea that the mother's health comes first. When I was pregnant the third time I was hospitalized with a blood clot, and it was made quite clear to me that no one gave a damn whether my baby lived or died, as long as I was healthy. (Of course it was also made clear that my health was of such utmost importance that they were almost willing to shove the medicine down my gd throat if I didn't stop whining about wanting my baby to live. Bastards. I checked out AMA.)
It seems to me that the mother's health is in the baby's best interest, and the baby's health is in the mother's best interest. Why should their interests be pitted against one another? Why shouldn't every effort be made for BOTH? And who better than the mother to make the decisions to make that happen?
I have no comments regarding the politics of labour management, but couldn't resist mentioning that from a textile arts point of view these models are truly captivating.
In the thread of pregnant/labouring women models and fetus-in-womb demonstration props, here's a post about some 19th century Japanese examples:
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/05/pregnant-dolls-from-edo-period-japan/