Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1061

JEAN LOUIS BAUDELOCQUE (1745?-1810) L'art des accouchemens. Chez Méquignon l'aîné 1781 Vol. I: lvi, 610 pp., [5] folded leaves of plates; Vol. II: xvi, 422 pp., [9] leaves of plates. 19.7 cm.

Baudelocque received medical instruction from his father, a prominent surgeon in Amiens, at an early age. He later completed his medical education in Paris where he became the most distinguished pupil of François Louis Joseph Solayrès de Renhac (1739-1772) at the Hôpital de la Charité. By 1776 he was a member of the Collège de Chirurgie and well established in Paris as a teacher and obstetrician. After the French Revolution, with its subsequent reorganization of France's scientific institutions, Baudelocque was appointed professor of obstetrics at the École de Santé and director of the Maternité. Baudelocque achieved a great reputation, became France's leading obstetrician, and was called upon to attend many women from Europe's top royal families. His fame and reputation also gained him some outspoken critics especially since Baudelocque was an advocate of cesarean section. It was his support of cesarean section that led him into a bitter lawsuit late in his career. Unfortunately, one of his patients died and he was forced to trial by his arch rival Jean François Sacombe (1750-1822). Baudelocque lost the suit and, in spite of his achievements and enormous professional stature, never fully recovered from the incident. Baudelocque's obstetric contributions include a forceps which he based on an earlier model of Levret (see No. 861) as well as a pelvimeter of his own design. He also introduced a technique for measuring the various diameters of the female pelvis one of which, the external conjugate, bears his name. The present work was immensely successful and went through at least eight French editions. Comprehensive in scope, it did much to popularize clinical pelvimetry and the plates depict instruments, normal and pathological pelves, as well as methods of forceps-assisted delivery in difficult presentations of the infant.

See Related Record(s): 861

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 6255; Waller 774 (3rd ed., 1796); Wellcome II, p. 115

Gift of John Martin, M.D.