Marie Marguerite Bihéron

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Marie Marguerite Bihéron also Marie Catherine Biheron (born November 17, 1719 in Paris ; † June 18, 1795 ) was a French artist and draftsman and maker of anatomical wax preparations .

Live and act

Bihéron was the daughter of a French pharmacist from Mamers . She studied illustration at the Jardin du Roi and with Françoise Basseporte .

Basseporte advised her to start making artificial anatomical models out of wax . Bihéron then found confirmation of what she would do later on a trip to London , as this type of artistic activity in her French environment was initially considered too unattractive and unpleasant for a woman. There she met the anatomist William Hunter and the surgeon William Hewson (1739–1774) know. She also stayed in London regularly at later times.

In order to obtain suitable corpses for the anatomical studies, Bihéron was forced to use the help of the military. Because of the rapid decomposition of the preparations, Bihéron switched from the initially only drawing to the creation of wax preparations.

She developed an extraordinary skill in the anatomical wax models . The famous doctor Villoisin and the botanist Bernard de Jussieu were impressed by this, and both encouraged their work. In 1759 the surgeon and encyclopaedist Sauveur François Morand invited her to present her work at the Académie des sciences . She was invited there again in 1770 to demonstrate an innovative, very detailed and lifelike model of a pregnant woman and a fetus ; a complete model with movable and removable parts. In 1771 she presented her works for the third time at the Académie des Sciences , where the Crown Prince of Sweden, Gustav III. , reviewed their work.

Her models achieved international renown both for their great anatomical accuracy and their closeness to reality, and because she had evidently developed a method for making the wax models in which the wax remained sufficiently solid at room temperature and above. In addition, Bihéron also created models of mushrooms for Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, who was a friend of her . The botanist Barbeu-Dubourg had described this in 1767. 

Since the Académie des sciences did not support women, Bihéron was forced to earn a living by holding exhibitions, selling her models and teaching courses on human anatomy. Both the King of Denmark and Empress Catherine II of Russia bought their wax models. For an exhibition of her waxen bodies in 1761, which took place in her apartment in the Rue Vieille-Estrapade not far from the Rue des Poules, she promoted with a brochure under the title Anatomie Artificielle . Bihéron exhibited models that showed anatomical structures including internal organs with a high degree of precision.

Bihéron temporarily moved to England because women were not allowed to teach anatomy in France. Among her English students was John Hunter , a Scottish doctor and surgeon who later made great strides in the field of surgery. Bihéron's anatomical instruction is believed to have been instrumental in his later studies, and some illustrations in his textbooks are likely from Bihéron.

The writer and philosopher Denis Diderot attended her anatomical events in order to put his late work Éléments de physiologie (1774) on a sound basis.

She met Benjamin Franklin during his stay in Paris in 1767 and remained in close contact with him. In 1775 she accompanied Benjamin Franklin's great-nephew, Jonathan Williams (1751-1815), during his stay in Paris.

Works (selection)

  • Anatomie artificial advertisement de l'exposition publique de pièces d'anatomie. Impr. De PA Le Prieur, Paris (1761), digitized on Gallica .

literature

  • G. Boulinier: A Female Anatomist of the Enlightenment: Marie Marguerite Biheron Histoire des Sciences médicales, 35/4 411-423 (2001)
  • June K. Burton: Napoleon and the Woman Question: Discourses of the Other Sex in French Education, Medicine, and Medical Law, 1799-1815 , Texas Tech University Press (2007)
  • Paul Dorveaux: Les femmes médecins. Notes sur Mademoiselle Biheron (1901–1902)
  • Catherine MC Haines: International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950 (2001)
  • Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey (Eds.): The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century , New York: Routledge (2000)
  • Poirer: Histoire des femmes de science en France (2002)
  • Londa L. Schiebinger: The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1989)
  • Laura Lynn Windsor: Women in Medicine: An Encyclopedia (2002)
  • Emil Harless, Rudolf Hartmann: Textbook of plastic anatomy: for academic institutions and for self-teaching: with many tables. Ebner & Seubert, Stuttgart 1876
  • S. Gilgenkrantz: The 18 (th) century between Écorchés and plastinated bodies, two female waxwork modelists: Anna Morandi and Marie-Marguerite Bihéron. Med Sci (Paris). 2012 May; 28 (5): 531-3. doi : 10.1051 / medsci / 2012285019 . Epub 2012 May 30.

Web links

Wikisource: Marie Catherine Biheron  - Sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to Georges Boulinier: Une femme anatomiste au siècle des Lumières: Marie Marguerite Bihéron (1719-1795). Histoire des Sciences médicales - Vol. XXXV, 4,411-423 (2001), p. 413, which refers to the index card viewed in the Archives de Paris under call number V3E / D 118, it is on 30 prairial An III or 18. Died June 1795 in Paris. Further evidence to support the claim can be found in Boulinier's work.
  2. ^ Andrew Cunningham, The Anatomist Anatomis'd: An Experimental Discipline in Enlightenment Europe. Ashgate Publishing, 2010
  3. ↑ G. Boulinier: A female anatomist of the enlightenment: Marie Marguerite Bihéron (1719-1795). Hist Sci Med 2001 Oct-Dec; 35 (4): 411-23.
  4. ↑ Portraits de Médicins. Marie Marguerite Biheron 1719–1795 Femme anatomiste
  5. ↑ Georges Boulinier: Une femme anatomist au siècle des Lumières: Marie Marguerite Biheron (1719-1795). , P. 416, 420, online (PDF; 6.32 MB)
  6. ^ Londa L. Schiebinger: The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. 1991, pp. 27-30.
personal data
SURNAME Bihéron, Marie Marguerite
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Biheron, Marie Catherine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1719
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH 1786