User:Acunangela/Angelique de Coudray

Angelique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray (1712 - 17 April 1794) was an influential, pioneering midwife during her lifetime. She was known as mysterious woman and powerful midwife educator in France. Coudray released a textbook on all her teaching on midwifery in 1759, titled Abrégé de l’art des accouchements. The book was translated in many languages including German, Dutch, and English. The textbook provided Coudray’s illustrations to show important maneuvers as well as how dangerous the maneuvers were.

Coudray invented a life size mannequin to demonstrate the birth process for the students. The machine was made of fabric and leather to represent mother’s pelvis including a doll size full-term baby. The mannequin helps to learn how to breech babies and properly catch and care for them. The invention led to King Louis XV attention. Coudray was appointed as the official midwife educator in 1759. Coudray continued to make a change working with government, medicine, and Catholic Church. As midwife educator Coudray taught in more than 40 provincial cities. Each class was three to six months long with over one hundred students. In her thirty years of teaching taught over 30,000 students.