ABSTRACT
In 1617 royal midwife Louise Bourgeois offered advice to her daughter. Publishing an open letter in Volume 2 of her well-known treatise, Observations diverses sur la sterilite, perte de fruict, foecondite, accouchements et maladies des femmes et enfants nouveaux naiz, Bourgeois cautioned the younger midwife against experimenting with remedies, withholding the caul that sometimes covered the head of an infant, and receiving women into her own home. 1 Entitled Instruction a mafille [Lessons for my daughter], the letter also bitterly denounced the 'effrontery' of those women who summoned men to assist them in normal labours. Bourgeois nevertheless suggested how to cope with the increasing demand for male intervention by describing an episode from her past:
In the name of protecting her client against both a frightening VISion and an infringement on female modesty, the clever midwife ensured that when the surgeon man-midwife appeared in the lying-in chamber, he simultaneously disappeared.
