Marie Boivin

Marie-Anne Victoire Boivin, born Gillain at Versailles in 1773, was a French midwife, inventor and writer on obstetrics who became one of the most influential women in nineteenth century medicine. Educated by nursing nuns at Etampes, she studied anatomy and midwifery after the Revolution, was widowed young, and trained in Paris under Marie-Louise Lachapelle at La Maternite, receiving her diploma in 1800. She became superintendent of a hospital at Versailles and later directed several hospitals, including the Maison Royale de Sante. She invented a new pelvimeter and a vaginal speculum, wrote on the causes of miscarriage and bleeding, and was among the first surgeons to amputate the cervix for cancer. Her handbook on the art of childbirth became a standard textbook, and her treatise on diseases of the uterus, illustrated with plates she coloured herself, replaced a text used for 150 years. She received an honorary degree from Marburg in 1827 and died in 1841.