A Battle for Obstetrical Education: Male Medical Students and Midwives in Nineteenth-century Northern France

The Napoleonic system of training midwives throughout France gave opportunities for young, often lower-class women to gain a medical education. That education was to be both theoretical and practical, helping save the infants of France throughout the countryside where male doctors and health officers did not practice. One of the biggest impediments to obstetrical education, however, was access to pregnant bodies willing to be examined and practiced on by students. The lack of willing guinea-pigs effected not only the education of midwives but also second-tier male medical students in the provinces. In this paper, I focus on the tensions and battles between these two groups over the limited number of willing patients in the Pas de Calais department, centered in the city of Arras. Despite a concerted effort by male professors to prioritize the education of male students over midwives, both government actors and powerful midwives used the language of sexual impropriety to prioritize the obstetrical education of women. By the end of the century, it was the midwifery school which survived and continued to train women in obstetrics, whereas the medical school for health officers closed for lack of a well-rounded educational model.