Born: 9 April 1773, France
Died: 16 May 1841
Country most active: France
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.
Marie Anne Boivin, a French midwife. She spent three years in the study of anatomy, and on being left a widow with a child and without fortune, she undertook the office of midwife at the Maternité Hospital, and in 1801 was appointed chief superintendent of the institution, to which at her suggestion a special school of accouchment was added.
An order of civil merit was conferred upon her, and she received the degree of M.D. Her Mémorial de l’Art des Accouchments, published in 1824, passed through many editions.
IW note: Boivin invented the pelvimeter and vaginal speculum, which are used to dilate the vagina and examine the cervix. She discovered causes of miscarriages and was the first to use a stethoscope to listen to the fetal heartbeat. Her books Mémorial de l’art des accouchements (The Art of Obstretrics, 1812) and Traité pratique des maladies de l’utérus et de ses annexes (1833, on diseases of the uterus) were important texts for medical students and midwives.
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
James Marion Sims, mentioned previously for his horrific torture of enslaved women in the name of gynaecological innovation, was widely credited for the invention of the modern speculum. (Specula in general date back to at least ancient Rome.) But decades earlier, French midwife Marie Boivin invented a vaginal speculum in 1825 (Sims would have been twelve at the time), as well as a pelvimeter. Along with being one of the first medical professionals to use a stethoscope to listen to foetal heartbeat, she also discovered the causes of certain types of bleeding, miscarriages, and placental and uterine diseases. The medical textbooks that she wrote were translated to different languages and used for 150 years.