Jean-Louis Baudelocque

Jean-Louis Baudelocque was a French obstetrician who studied and practiced medicine in Paris. He was born in Heilly in Picardy on 30 November 1745 and died on 2 May 1810. He is known for helping to make obstetrics a scientific discipline in France, building on the methods of the English obstetrician William Smellie and refining the pelvic forceps of André Levret. He designed a pelvimeter, a caliper for measuring the outer dimensions of the pelvis, and the external conjugate diameter of the pelvis is still called Baudelocque's diameter. He wrote a widely read book on midwifery, the Art des accouchemens of 1781. In 1806 Napoleon appointed him to the first chair of obstetrics in France, and he served as physician in chief at the Maternité in Paris, where he taught midwifery. He attended Empress Marie-Louise and Caroline Bonaparte as accoucheur.