Marie Colinet

Marie Colinet (born around 1560, died after 1638) was a midwife and surgeon. Born in Geneva, the daughter of a Genevan printer, she began as a midwife there and in 1587 married the surgeon Wilhelm Fabry, often called the father of German surgery, who taught her surgery and by his own admission found that she excelled him. The couple lived in Payerne, travelled through Switzerland, Holland and the Rhineland, and settled in Bern in 1615, where both were granted citizenship. She was regarded as the most famous midwife of Switzerland and is credited with a successful caesarean section in 1603, with using heat to dilate and stimulate the uterus during labour, and, in 1624, with the idea of using a magnet to draw a sliver of metal out of a patient's eye, a technique her husband credited to her although he often receives the credit. She also treated fractures and wrote two books. A street in Hilden and a secondary school there bear her name.