Eléments de l'art d'accoucher, en faveur des elèves-sages-femmes de la généralité de Guienne. Par Madame Coutanceau, brévetée du Roi, en survivance, pour enseigner l'art des accouchements dans tout le Royaume.

COUTANCEAU, Madame [Marguerite Guillaumanche]

Verlag: A Bordeaux: Chez Michel Racle, 1784.

xxiv, 356 pp. Contemporary full leather. Contemporary full leather. Piece missing at bottom of spine. Rubbed, with cracking, along joints (see photos). Split along bottom 1" of rear joint. Errata--printed on pp. xxiii-xxiv--have been entered in ink into the specified places in the text. Piece torn from upper and side margin of 353/354, with loss of page number in upper margin on p. 353, or maybe the page number is under the piece of paper that has been patched into the top margin (see photos). Written on verso of rear flyleaf: "Madame Ducoudrai tante de Madame Countanceau." First Edition. "Mme Coutanceau has also done something to help herself, figuring out, as had her aunt [Madame du Coudray] nearly thirty years ago, that a printed book would enhance her status in the eyes of male practitioners. . . . She wrote up a short manuscript of her lessons, asking that her textbook [offered here] be published with the approval of the Academy of Bordeaux to further bolster her position. She also insisted that it be distributed, at the intendant's expense, to her past, present, and future student. . . . "She makes a strong case for keeping the profession of midwifery exclusively female, refusing to let it fall irretrievably into male hands. . . . We get a hint here that Mme Coutanceau has tapped into a level of repressed female anger that her aunt did not acknowledge and that might explain her more proprietary, feminist view of her profession. . . . Birthing is women's work, and that is that" (Nina Gelbart, The King's Midwife. A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray, pp. 247-48). Madame Coutanceau was Marguerite Guillaumanche du Coudray and then after her marriage, Madame Coutanceau. Madame Coutanceau's life and work are discussed at length by Nina Gelbart. Madame du Coudray "adopted" and raised Madame Coutanceau (hence the handwritten notation in this book that Madame de Coudray was the "aunt" of Madame Coutanceau). Just as Madame du Coudray received a royal "brevet" to instruct midwives, so did Madame Coutanceau as Madame du Coudray's heir. OCLC locates copies in these US libraries: Huntington, National Library of Medicine, Pennsylvania, Rochester. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 15172

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Eléments de l'art d'accoucher, en faveur des...
Verlag: A Bordeaux: Chez Michel Racle, 1784.
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: Good
Auflage: 1st Edition