Jean Louis Baudelocque
Jean Louis Baudelocque (1745-1810) became Professor of Obstetrics at the Ecole de santé, and surgeon in chief and accoucheur at the Paris Maternité hospital in 1798. He was considered the leading French obstetrician of his time, and attended Napoleon's wife, Marie Thèrese. Although William Smellie described the principles of pelvimetry, measuring the diagonal (internal) conjugate of the pelvis, Baudelocque advanced the importance of clinical pelvimetry with the invention of the pelvimeter. "Baudelocque's diameter" gave an estimate of the posterior-anterior pelvic measurement, in an attempt to determine those patients in whom difficulties at birth might be met. His important work popularized the use of forceps, advocated caesarian section, and showed the relation between post-partum infection and sterility. Baudelocque's forceps became popular in America.
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