Du Coudray, Angélique (1712–1789)

French obstetrician who trained 4,000 pupils in midwifery. Name variations: Angelique du Coudray; Madame du Coudray; Marguerite le Boursier. Born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1712; died in 1789.

In an age rife with charlatans and crude techniques, Madame Du Coudray was a midwife in France who lent a scientific approach to the field of obstetrics. She was born in Clermont-Ferrand and received training in Paris at the Hôtel Dieu School. In 1740, she was licensed as an accoucheuse, or midwife.

Her 1759 work, Abrégé de l'art des accouchements avec plusiers observations sur des cas singuliers, was a revision and expansion of a 1667 midwifery textbook. She began teaching midwifery in France the same year as her publication of this text. When Louis XV provided Du Coudray with an annual salary for her teaching services in all the provinces, she arranged a class of one hundred in Auvergne. Biographer Nina Rattner Gelbart in The King's Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray portrays Du Coudray as a midwife who regarded her teaching as a type of patriotic duty. In order for her pupils to be able to practice deliveries, she made use of an actual foetus and invented obstetrical "machines"; these anatomical models were composed of leather which encased real pelvic bones (the bones later to be made of wicker and wood).

She is said to have trained 4,000 pupils, and to have been responsible for the training of 10,000 when including both those whom she trained as well as those who were then trained by her former students. Under Du Coudray's direction, a course in practical obstetrics was begun at the veterinary school at Alfort in 1780. Jealousy between the all-female midwives and the all-male surgeons had been reported as early as 1743, but Du Coudray was surprised by the enmity of surgeons who were staunchly opposed to her teaching. Her recognition, however, was such that the Church permitted her to baptize babies. In cases of malpractice in which a mother or a child suffered mutilation, Du Coudray was often summoned to provide assistance. Publication of her Oeuvres came in 1773. In her advanced years, Du Coudray received a government pension.