Marie Anne Boivin

Mme. Veuve Boivin (no year)

Marie Anne Victorine Boivin (also incorrectly: Victoire ) (born April 9, 1773 in Montreuil , † May 16, 1841 in Paris ) was a French midwife . She was regarded as the most important woman healer of her time.

Life

She was born as Marie Anne Gillain in Montreuil near Versailles . She was trained in a monastery in Étampes and attracted the attention of Princess Madame Élisabeth . After the monastery was destroyed during the French Revolution , she learned anatomy and midwifery. In 1797 she married the civil servant Louis Boivin, with whom she had a daughter and who died early. In 1800 she became a midwife in a hospital and in 1801 its head. In 1802 she persuaded the Interior Minister Jean-Antoine Chaptal to found a midwifery school in the maternity hospital (Hospice de la Maternité) in Paris and to adapt the public curricula.

After the death of her daughter, she became deputy director of the Paris maternity hospital, which was run by the widely recognized midwife Marie Louise Dugès Lachappelle. After Boivin had fallen out with her around 1813, she became deputy director of the General Hospital (Hôpital général) of the Seine-et-Oise department in 1814 . In 1815 she headed a field hospital and then the Mothers' Hospice and the Royal Hospital (Maison Royale de Santé) in Bordeaux .

Boivin improved the surgical instruments used in obstetrics (including pelvimeters, vaginal specula, etc.) and was recognized by doctors as a luminary in their field. She was the first to use the stethoscope to listen to the fetal heartbeat.

Together with Antoine Louis Dugès , she wrote a work on uterine diseases between 1833 and 1837, which replaced the standard work that had been used for 150 years. Her book on the art of childbirth , published in 1812, had also become a recognized handbook for obstetrics. She also wrote and published other internationally recognized articles on gynecology.

Princely courts - including that of the Russian Empress - wooed them in vain for Boivin to practice with them. As a patriot, Boivin was bitter that she was not recognized by the French Academy of Sciences and that her highest honors came from abroad.

Despite her fame, she died impoverished after a long illness that she contracted in 1840 and which prevented her from continuing to practice. The cause of the disease could not be correctly diagnosed.

Fonts (selection)

Mémorial de l'art des Accouchements ( The Art of Childbirth ), from 1812 in several editions.
- Mémorial de l'art des accouchemens, ou Principes fondés sur la pratique de l'Hospice de la Maternité de Paris et sur celle des plus célèbres praticiens nationaux et étrangers in the Google Book Search, 3rd edition. Méquignon, Paris 1827.
- Handbook of obstetrics, based on the principles of the maternity hospital in Paris and those of the most famous domestic and foreign obstetricians . Translated from the 3rd edition of the original by Ferdinand Robert. Krieger, Kassel 1829. Digitized at the Bavarian State Library
Traité pratique des maladies de l'utérus et de ses annexes , 1833.
Nouvelles recherches sur l'origine, la nature et le traitement de la môle vesiculaire, ou grossesse hydatique . Paris: L'Aine, 1827.
- New research into the origin, nature and treatment of bladder mola or hydatid pregnancy . Weimar: Landesindustriecomptoir, 1828.
About a very common and as yet little known cause of the abortion, together with a memorandum about the intro-pelvimeter or inner pelvic knife; crowned by the Royal Society of Medicinal Sciences at Bordeaux . Translated and annotated by Friedrich Ludwig Meissner . Leipzig, 1829.

Honors

In 1814 she was awarded the Golden Medal of Civil Merit of Prussia.
In 1828 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Marburg .
She was an honorary member of the Royal Society of Medical Sciences in Bordeaux .
A Venus crater was named after her.

literature

Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie : Women in science: antiquity through the nineteenth century: a biographical dictionary with annotated bibliography . 3. Edition. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1991, ISBN 0-262-65038-X , p. 43

Web links

Commons : Marie Boivin - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Marie Anne Boivin in the WorldCat bibliographic database

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. 1000 biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 71. The Augsburger Tagblatt names a stroke as the cause of death. See No. 143, Tuesday, May 25, 1841, p. 612.
↑ biography on Medarus (fr.) ( Memento of 12 December 2013, Internet Archive ).
^ Gale biographical encyclopedia ( memento of September 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
^ Augsburgische Ordinari Postzeitung , Nro. 207, Thursday, Aug. 28, 1828. A (general) doctorate is also mentioned in the Augsburger Tagblatt , no. 143, Tuesday, May 25, 1841, p. 612.

personal data
SURNAME	Boivin, Marie Anne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Boivin, Marie Anne Victorine (full name); Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	french midwife
DATE OF BIRTH	April 9, 1773
PLACE OF BIRTH	Montreuil
DATE OF DEATH	May 16, 1841
Place of death	Paris

[Lux-1] Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. 1000 biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 71. The Augsburger Tagblatt names a stroke as the cause of death. See No. 143, Tuesday, May 25, 1841, p. 612.

[2] raphy on Medarus (fr.) ( Memento of 12 December 2013, Internet Archive ).

[3] Gale biographical encyclopedia ( memento of September 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).

[4] Augsburgische Ordinari Postzeitung , Nro. 207, Thursday, Aug. 28, 1828. A (general) doctorate is also mentioned in the Augsburger Tagblatt , no. 143, Tuesday, May 25, 1841, p. 612.