François Mauriceau

François Mauriceau (1637 to 1709) was a French obstetrician born in Paris, where he trained in obstetrics at the Hôtel-Dieu. He was one of the leading obstetricians of seventeenth-century Europe, and in 1668 he published Traité des Maladies des Femmes Grosses et Accouchées, a book that helped establish obstetrics as a science and was eventually translated into several languages. His name is attached to a classical maneuver for assisted breech delivery, the Mauriceau-Levret manipulation, and he gave a description of tubal pregnancy. Together with the German midwife Justine Siegemundin he is credited with introducing the practice of puncturing the amniotic sac to arrest bleeding in placenta praevia. In 1670 the English obstetrician Hugh Chamberlen tried to sell him the secret of a specialized obstetrical forceps, and Mauriceau, disgusted that the Chamberlen family kept such an important development secret, accused them of swindling. He died in Paris.