accoucheurs

Again, in the eighteenth-century, my favorite period in English Literature, (at the dawn of the modern era -- but before Louis Pasteur), accoucheurs (the precursors of obstetricians) killed many women with the microbes they unknowingly carried from the sickbeds of other patients.

Erica Jong: If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would be a Sacrament 2008

For no accoucheurs performed their office upon her, and therefore they were cast forth as an abortion, useful for nothing, and formed to accomplish no work of the Mother.

ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus 1819-1893 2001

It was as though a fate was over these charming creatures; so that the King and Queen trembled whenever the accoucheurs announced a daughter instead of a son.

Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete Various

What with the aid of the Scripture-readers, the various nursing and charitable sisterhoods, and the young medical accoucheurs in their fourth year, with whom I scraped acquaintance, I got to be quite well known in Gee's Court and could go about in safety.

Recollections With Photogravure Portrait of the Author and a number of Original Letters, of which one by George Meredith and another by Robert Louis Stevenson are reproduced in facsimile David Christie Murray

In Dr. Francis's "Notes to Denman's Midwifery" a passage is cited from Dr. Hosack in which he refers to certain puerperal cases which proved fatal to several lying-in women, and in some of which the disease was supposed to be conveyed by the accoucheurs themselves.

The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) Various

The well-founded doubts which in preaseptic times many accoucheurs entertained concerning the Caesarean operation, led to so-called symphyseotomy (Jean René Siegualt, 1768) which by widening the pelvis would permit delivery of the fetus.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 10: Mass Music-Newman 1840-1916 1913

The most important accoucheurs of the eighteenth century were: in France,

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 10: Mass Music-Newman 1840-1916 1913

At Sunderland, “in all, forty-three cases occurred from the 1st of January to the 1st of October, when the disease ceased; and of this number, forty were witnessed by Mr. Gregson and his assistant, Mr. Gregory, the remainder having been separately seen by three accoucheurs.

The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever 1909

In Dr. Francis’s “Notes to Denman’s Midwifery” a passage is cited from Dr. Hosack in which he refers to certain puerperal cases which proved fatal to several lying-in women, and in some of which the disease was supposed to be conveyed by the accoucheurs themselves.

The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever 1909

Emperor, poor man -- written in the nineties, when he had not yet begun to be more sinned against than sinning, which was, she was firmly convinced, what was the matter with him now, and full of exciting things about his birth and his right arm and accoucheurs -- without having to put it down and go and stare at the sea.

The Enchanted April Elizabeth von Arnim 1903