Table of Contents

• Contents
• Life of Louise Bourgeois; Bourgeois's anatomical and physiological theories
• Delivery of a child
• Bourgeois's relationship with her clients
• Midwife and medical men; the "Recueil des Secrets"
• Conclusion
• Notes

About the Author

Wendy Perkins is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Birmingham.

Reviews

Louise Bourgeois was an important figure, in her lifetime and beyond, and her writings offer an unusual insight into an aspect of health care that is often difficult for historians to examine. Her works have many stories to tell, about the circumstances of women's work and self-expression, about midwifery and childbirth. This book should herald the revival of Bourgeois scholarship ... Wendy Perkins has written an excellent account of the work, writings and career of Louise Bourgeois, who had a flourishing midwifery practice at the French royal court at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Bourgeois was notable as a successful and articulate woman practitioner and author... Perkins, who is an expert on French literature, has integrated into her account recent work of social historians on medicine: on the medical market place, on patient-doctor relations, especially between women and medical practitioners, and on the social construction of the body. She does so with skill and modesty.