- Marie Boivin
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Marie Boivin (9 April 1773 — 16 May 1841) was a French midwife and obstetrics writer.
Marie Anne Victoire Gillain was born in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, and educated in a nunnery in Étampes, where her talents attracted the attention of Madame Elisabeth, sister of King Louis XVI. When the nunnery was destroyed during the French Revolution, she spent three years studying anatomy and midwifery. In 1797 she married a government bureaucrat, Louis Boivin, but he died shortly thereafter, leaving her with a daughter and little money. She became a midwife at a local hospital, and in 1801 became its superintendent. In that role she convinced Jean-Antoine Chaptal to add a special school of obstetrics.[citation needed]
In the subsequent years she served as co-director or director at a number of hospitals, including the General Hospital for Seine and Oise (1814), a temporary military hospital (1815), the Hospice de la Maternité, and the Maison Royal de Santé. Her Mémorial de l'art des accouchements (1817) went through several editions. She was granted an honorary M.D. (1828) by the University of Marburg, and was invested with an order of merit by the King of Prussia.[citation needed]
References
- "Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire". The New American Cyclopædia. 3. 1858. p. 437. http://books.google.com/books?id=ST3rqchfNTQC&pg=RA5-PA437&dq=marie+boivin.
- Marilyn Ogilvie (1986). "Boivin, Marie Gillain". Women in Science: Antiquity through Nineteenth Century: A Biographical Dictionary with Annotated Bibliography. MIT Press. p. 43. ISBN 026265038X.
Categories:- Midwives
- French science writers
- French women writers
- 1773 births
- 1841 deaths
- People from Montreuil
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