Louise Bourgeois: An Early Modern Midwife’s Observations on Female Infertility

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

¹ While supporting the contemporary preference for the term “involuntary childlessness,” which focuses our attention on the social and psychological consequences of an individual’s or couple’s experience of biological infertility, in this article I use the term “infertility” in order to explore the early modern medical conception of this state. I use “infertility” throughout this article as the standard translation of the noun “stérilité,” which regularly occurs in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French medical texts I shall cite.

² Recent critics, with the exception of Evenden (8–11), generally assume the authors of an earlier compendium in English, The Complete Midwifes Practice (1656), to be male. (See O’Hara’s judicious summary of the case in O’Hara 74, n. 25). This compendium was largely derived, without acknowledgment, from continental male authors and from Louise Bourgeois; four sets of initials are the only indication of its authors’ possible identity.

³ In her excellent edition of Sharp’s text, Elaine Hobby, although assuming the author to be a female midwife called Jane Sharp, acknowledges at the outset that “We do not know who Jane Sharp was” (xi).

⁴ For example, Morphis has argued that even if the biographical identity and gender of the author cannot be determined, this does not prevent us from recognizing the author’s construction of a female voice (167, 191 n.6).

⁵ See the translation and critical edition by Tatlock.

⁶ See the discussion of this evidence by Klairmont Lingo (Klairmont Lingo 36, n. 75).

⁷ See the discussion by Rouget in his article on Bourgeois’s powers of reflection.

⁸ In her discussion of what can be discovered about aphrodisiacs to stimulate fertility or cure infertility in early modern England, Jennifer Evans teases out the difficulty of distinguishing between laypeople’s use of information circulating in printed works as opposed to their recourse to unwritten, popular sources (Evans 33–34; 38–39). In this respect, Bourgeois’s comments allow us to identify what information the midwife believed she conveyed to her clients.

⁹ See annotated English translation in Worth-Stylianou, Pregnancy and Birth 347–348.

¹⁰ For an excellent overview of classical Greek writings on infertility, see Flemming 565–590.

¹¹ She refers in passing to Galen and Hippocrates (e.g. Bourgeois 204, 303), but although many of her practices engage with ancient theories – whether to uphold or contest them – as Klairmont Lingo’s footnotes show, there is no other evidence that Bourgeois had read these authors or was deliberately drawing on their writings.

¹² See Worth-Stylianou, Les Traités d’obstétrique 119–122, 135–140.

¹³ I shall cite Joubert in the annotated modern English translation by de Rocher; see also Worth-Stylianou, Les Traités d’obstétrique 187–226.

¹⁴ See Worth-Stylianou, Les Traités d’obstétrique 257–268; Worth-Stylianou, Pregnancy and Birth 63–137.

¹⁵ However, Madame Dupuis, one of the sworn senior midwives who examined Bourgeois, apparently distrusted her for precisely the same reason, expecting that she would be in league with physicians and surgeons to the disservice of midwives (Bourgeois 235).

¹⁶ Klairmont Lingo’s account of the training and education of midwives sets the wider professional context (Klairmont Lingo 27–30).

¹⁷ She records being present at his deathbed (Bourgeois 303–304).

¹⁸ “[…] which made me think that her anger had something to do with it, according to what Paré says in his book entitled Of the Generation of Man […]” (Bourgeois 114).

¹⁹ Nonetheless, Klairmont Lingo’s footnotes on Bourgeois’s Diverse Observations are replete with references to Paré’s De la generation, as a proxy for late Renaissance medical teachings on pregnancy and childbirth, indicating Bourgeois may have known them very well.

²⁰ One notable exception to her disinclination to cite specific classical authors occurs when she refers, in close succession (Bourgeois 204) to Hippocrates on children born at seven months, and to Hippocrates and Galen on the signs of a stillborn child.

²¹ See Worth-Stylianou Les Traités d’obstétrique 89–117 (Rösslin) and 361–373 (Guillemeau); and Worth-Stylianou, Pregnancy and Birth 139–219 (Guillemeau).

²² The chapters indicated in square brackets bear on infertility, but this is not the primary focus.

²³ Translating from Marinelli’s Italian work, but supplementing it liberally with his own material, he draws extensively, with precise references, on a wide range of classical sources, notably Hippocrates, Galen and Aristotle. However, he offers corrective readings of classical authorities where he believes that Renaissance anatomists and physicians (Fernel, Faloppius, etc) have discovered new truths.

²⁴ Since Bourgeois discusses only female sterility within the province of the midwife’s expertise, I shall leave aside here the discussion of male infertility by Paré, Joubert and Liebault.

²⁵ For example, in terms of humoral imbalance Joubert argues that in most cases the woman’s womb is too hot and dry, rather than, as is commonly believed, too cold and damp (Popular Errors 121–122). Liebault is distinctive in his emphasis on the importance of a positive sexual relationship for conception; for example, in II.2 he argues that if a man ejaculates too soon before a woman has experienced pleasure, this may impede conception.

²⁶ Paré is unusual among surgeons, in part because of his privileged role as royal surgeon, for the confidence with which he explains physiology as well as anatomy, and assumes he has the competence to treat some female reproductive problems independently. It should nonetheless be remembered that in 1575 he aroused the wrath of the College of Physicians in this respect (Worth-Stylianou, “The definition” 150–153).

²⁷ “le mary seul en doit estre le juge: ou pour luy la sage femme qui maniera et tentera les lieux” (Liebault 194).

²⁸ E.g. mistaking the uterus for the placenta, and pulling on it to extract the afterbirth, thereby causing a prolapse (Liebault 445).

²⁹ For a fuller analysis of the shifts and complexities within Bourgeois’s relations with male medical professionals, see the article by Perkins.

³⁰ “if a poor miserable woman forgets herself so much as to rid herself of a child, she is justly condemned to die as an example. Do those women who are not punished in this world think they can escape God’s justice? No, no they are wrong; He is just and rigorous. Would to God that the punishment of such women could be increased […]” (Bourgeois 115).

³¹ On Bourgeois’s religious position, see Klairmont Lingo’s analysis (Klairmont Lingo 34–35).

³² In her advice to her daughter who wishes to become a midwife, she says: “For you are the child of a family in which your sister’s husband is a physician, your husband is studying to become one, one of your brothers is an apothecary, your father is a surgeon, and I am a midwife. The entire body of the medical profession is represented in our household” (Bourgeois 267).

³³ C.f. her conclusion, later in this chapter, to a case history: “This is why it is very important for a woman to call the physician in order to have him understand what her constitution is, so that by his prudence he can act as he judges best” (Bourgeois 121).

³⁴ A reference to physicians successfully employing “desiccating substances” to treat infertile women who suffer from “a great deal of moisture in the womb” (Bourgeois 105).

³⁵ A reference to women who suffer from too much heat rather than too much moisture, so that their blood is “quite burned and excessively choleric,” a condition which she ascribes to their consuming strong foods and too much strong wine (Bourgeois 109).

³⁶ A reference to many pregnant women experiencing some “form of illness,” such as nausea, “weakness” (i.e. a predisposition to faintness) and pica (Bourgeois 116).